


A Compilation of Newsies Meta and Headcanons

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Meta Essay, Other, headcanons, reposted from tumblr blog David-Jacobs-Would
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 23:18:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 49
Words: 62,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17011065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Detailed headcanons for literally every Newsies character, especially the ones from the 1992 movie.  Reposted from tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Preface**

Read the chapter titles to find headcanons about a specific character. 

Note that some headcanons may include various triggers and unpleasant things.


	2. List of Newsies with basic character descriptions - 1992

****main characters****

David Jacobs: David is new to being a Newsie, but quickly becomes one of the leaders of the newsies’ strike. Unlike many of the other newsies, he goes to school and has a family to look after him. He sings “Seize the Day”. His character development is accomplished through the gradual loss of his clothing. David Jacobs is the guiding light behind the strike.

Les Jacobs: Les is David’s little brother. He’s near ten years old, but can pass for seven. He’s innocent and shows a lot of enthusiasm about the strike. He’s good at faking sick to elicit sympathy. He looks up to Jack.

Jack Kelly: Jack Kelly has a lot of secrets. He’s the main leader of the Newsies strike. He’s a dreamer with a criminal past. He wants to go to Santa Fe. Some people ship him with David, but the film ends with him kissing David’s sister Sarah. He grows up to be batman.

Crutchy: Crutchy got his nickname because the newsies are a very observant bunch of young gentlemen and noticed that he uses a crutch to get around. Crutchy gets caught by the police early in the movie, and is sent to the Refuge. From that point on, many a scab gets soaked in his name. His brain has a mind of its own, and he does things to sauerkraut that will make your head spin.

Spot Conlon: Spot Conlon would like a porcelain tub with boiling water. More importantly, he is the child king of Brooklyn. He makes the other newsies a little nervous. His support is crucial to the Newsies strike, but he doesn’t give it lightly. Spot is good with a slingshot.

Boots: Boots ain’t afraid of Brooklyn. He spent a month there one night. Maybe he is a time traveler, or maybe the script writers of newsies weren’t terribly bothered about whether or not their dialogue made sense. Anyway, Boots accompanies Jack and David to Brooklyn to try and rope Spot into the strike. He even gives Spot some marbles. Boots can’t stand blood.

Kid Blink: Kid Blink is based on Louis Ballatt, the real historical leader of the Newsies strike. In the film he wears a cool eyepatch, dances a lot, exhibits foul early morning odors, tried to rescue Jack during the rally that one time, and is generally pretty cool. Kid Blink would like to spend a Saturday night with the mayor’s daughter, but she hasn’t replied to any of his letters. This could be because in 1899 the mayor didn’t have a daughter. A lot of the fandom prefers to have him spend his Saturday nights with Mush, and that ship is called Blush.

Mush Meyers: Mush is an energetic and friendly Newsie. He’s probably a morning person, but let’s not hold that against him. A lot of people ship him with Kid Blink.

Racetrack Higgins: “In 1899 the streets echoed with the voices of Newsies.” This line, spoken by Racetrack Higgins, begins the glorious musical masterpiece that is the Newsies film. Racetrack enjoys cigars and gambling. Some people ship him with Spot Conlon, because they are both short and they stood next to each other once. The Spot/ Race ship is called sprace.

****Background Newsies******

Itey: Itey might be Italian. He shares a bed with Snitch. I’m sure he and Snitch are good friends, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate waking up to a foot in his face.

Snitch: Snitch is first seen in bed with Itey. He sucks his thumb, which I’m sure is meant to be zany Disney comedy, but it’s kind of sad when you think about it. Let’s come up with tragic backstories for him. It will be fun! :) :) ;) (tragedy!!)

Skittery: Skittery didn’t do it! You know, unless “it” was stealing Racetrack’s towel and holding it hostage for a dollar, because he totally did that. He is rather apprehensive about the whole strike thing. He’s known for being “dumb and glumb” and dressing in pink.

Tumbler: Tumbler is one of the littlest newsies. Watch for him at the end of the closing credits.

Specs: Specs wears glasses. That’s why he’s called Specs. Specs = glasses. Haha. :). He seems like kind of a smart ass.

Bumlets: Bumlets’ hair has been rumored to have magical qualities. He’s a very impressive dancer. He ends King of New York by spinning on a ceiling fan and it’s glorious. Bumlets is definitely a fan favorite.

Swifty: Swifty is called a “rake”, which in 1899 speak means he was a pickpocket. He doesn’t say a lot, but he’s really cool, and everybody likes him.

Jake: Jake has no lines, but his expressive eyes and winning smile speak volumes.

Dutchy：Dutchy’s shining moment comes when he asks Kloppman how to spell “strike” (and also all those times he’s seen dancing, because he’s seriously good at that). His name suggests a high degree of Dutchness.

Snipeshooter: Snipeshooter is a small child who enjoys smoking cigars. He thinks crooked politicians make good headlines. He’s wrong.

My cat: My cat is cute and fluffy. She’s not in newsie, but I don’t feel like people pay enough attention when I post pictures of her on her own, so I’ve surrounded her with pictures of Newsies to make her appear more glamorous. Her name is Skittery. She enjoys knocking things off of high places, breaking stuff, and making her litterbox smell bad.

****** other characters*******

Pulitzer: Pulitzer doesn’t spend Newsies giving out prizes. In fact, he’s the villain of our story. He raises the prices of newspapers, forcing the newsies to go on strike. Nobody likes him, but his daughter Katherine is pretty cool. Unfortunately Katherine didn’t make an appearance in the Newsies movie because she was too busy rehearsing for her Broadway debut.

Kloppman: Kloppman is sort of like the den mother of the Newsboys’ Lodging House. He wakes the boys up in the morning, and looks after them. He seems to genuinely care about and side with the newsies.

Denton: Our man Denton is an ace reporter with the New York Sun, who writes articles about the Newsies strike. He seems to have a high opinion of himself. He eventually helps David, Jack, and Sarah print the Newsies Banner, but only after trying to weasel out of the cause. Rumor has it that he’s the King of New York.

Medda: Medda dreams of the day her lovey dovey baby will come back and cootchie coo with her. She’s been through both high times and hard times, but she’s come out of them as a vaudeville star and a friend to the newsies. Maybe she knew Jack’s father. She isn’t actually Swedish. She owns Irving Hall, and she lets the newsies hold their rally there.

Jonathan: Jonathan works for Pulitzer. He suggests increasing the price of papers to the “distribution apparatus”, because just calling them newsies would make them sound too human. He’s prim, proper, and not that great of a person.

Warden Snyder: Warden Snyder is the stuff nightmares are made of. Presumably the actor who played him was going for an over the top Disney Villain approach to acting, but he’s actually really really creepy. He runs the Refuge for his own profit. He steals food from the prisoners, and has shady dealings with the judges. Jack is terrified of him.

The Delancey Brothers: The Delancey Brothers are Morris and Oscar. They work at the distribution center, and are in charge of keeping the newsies in line. At one point they go after the Jacobs siblings with brass knuckles. Nonetheless, they have a strong fan following. The picture only shows the back of their heads, but that’s okay because Oscar likes his hat a lot, and would probably be happy that I chose a picture of him that really shows it off.

Seitz: Seitz works for Pulitzer alongside Jonathan. He seems to sympathize with the newsies, but not enough to put himself or his financial security on the line. He’s sassy and rolls his eyes a lot.

Esther and Mayer Jacobs: Esther and Mayer are the mother and father of David, Les, and Sarah. David and Les have to work because Mayer broke his arm in a factory accident (if only he’d had a UNION to protect him!!). They feed Jack chocolate cake and watery soup.

Mr. Weisel: This guy runs the distribution center where the Newsies go to buy their papes. Jack calls him “Weasel”. He’s a total scumbag.

Sarah Jacobs: Sarah is the sister of David and Les. She’s awesome. She has pretty hair, a strong commitment to social issues, and an even stronger commitment to her family, which leads her to become involved in the 1899 newsies strike. She helps to print and distribute the Newsies Banner, and reminds Jack that the same sun shines over both Santa Fe and New York. The movie ends with her kissing Jack.


	3. Kid Blink (1992) headcanon list 1

As far as Newsies with tragic pasts go, Blink is up there.

\- His dad was a very creative sort of drunkard and he could be terrible or kind in equal measures, but Blink never knew what he was going to get. His dad was a great story teller, and came up with amazing games, but he also could become very physically violent when angry. When Blink’s mother died most of his father’s better qualities died with her.

\- His dad kicked him out of the house when he got remarried. He kept the family cat, but not Blink.

\- Jack Kelly Stories has written some things about Blink having spent some time in the Refuge, and of his losing his eye being because of an eye infection that he contracted there. She also wrote something about some medical people tying him down for a while in a dark room to keep him from losing the other eye, and to treat the infection. Basically all of this. If you don’t read Jack Kelly Stories, you are missing out on one of the best things life has to offer.

\- Blink ended up at the lodging house when he was not quite 13.

\- He got off to a rough start. He was a scrawny kid, newly blind in one eye, and he was scared and angry. He had lice. He wet the bed his first few nights at the lodge. Basically he wasn’t a very endearing as far as most of the boys were concerned.

\- Mush decided they were best friends pretty much right away.

\- There was also an inconvenient and frankly terrifying investigation into whether or not he was really an orphan.

\- Mush convinced him to tell Kloppman why he really didn’t want his family to be found, and some paper work got mysteriously lost, and Blink got official orphan status.

\- The group of older kids at the lodging house at the time were ridiculously awful to Blink, but he made friends with Crutchy, Skittery, and Swifty, who were the younger ones there at the time. Swifty ended up drifting away from this group to pursue other people and things.

-Blink is older than Mush by almost a year and a half, but early on Mush acted like the older of the two.

\- Blink initially didn’t want to be called Blink, but that’s what the other kids called him. Mush, Swifty, Crutchy and Skittery called him Kid. By the time we meet him in Newsies he thinks his eye patch is cool, and he likes being called Blink.

\- Once Blink got comfortable in his new life, he was surprisingly funny, friendly, and charismatic. He’s really bright and creative, and he has a sense of excitement and adventure.

-Jack and Blink hit it off really well.

-Blink would do anything for his friends, including getting himself thrown in the Refuge for them.

-He has good luck with girls. He started getting interested in girls pretty early.

-And guys.

-Blink is Bi.

\- At one point he had a brief and amiable friends with benefits type thing going on with Jack.

\- Blink is unpredictable when drunk. Sometimes he’s happy and giggly, sometimes affectionate, sometimes he’s banging his head against trees and throwing furniture, and sometimes he cries.

\- However, it worries him that he likes to drink, so he’s very careful with it.

\- He starts to develop a crush on Mush as they get older. It hits it’s height around the time he’s nineteen.

\- He cares about Mush’s boundaries, though, and his relationship with Mush is one of the most important things in his life, so they manage to have some discussion on what Mush is and isn’t comfortable with, maybe a little haltingly, and maybe not that maturely (especially on Blink’s part), but they figure things out.

\- He knows that Mush thinks the best of people, and that Mush trusts others, and part of him admires that a lot, and part of him sees that a weakness. He’s incredibly protective of Mush.

\- A lot of people at the lodging house, including some who Blink gets along with famously, think that Mush just isn’t all that bright, and this makes Blink angry, especially when they mock Mush in subtle ways that Mush himself doesn’t notice.

\- A lot of things make him angry. It’s really hard for him to regulate his temper. He’s pretty sure a lot of times that Mush is the only thing that keeps him from killing somebody, and that scares him.

\- He very very rarely gets mad at Mush though, and when he does it’s pretty mild, and usually because he feels like Mush endangered himself or something.

\- He and Jack are both rather confused by Mush’s friendship with David.

\- Small kids make him nervous.

 

-so do cats.

\- Even as an adult living in an apartment with Mush he can’t entirely believe that things are okay and he’s safe. It’s easy to make him feel satisfied and happy with his lot, because he honestly expected things to turn out much worse.

\- He doesn’t hate his father, and that’s one of the hardest things in the world with him to come to terms with, because he really wishes he did hate his father.


	4. Kid Blink headcanon list 2

**sleep headcanon**

Once he moves in with Mush he shares a bed with him, but it’s not as cuddly as you might think. Both of them are very physically affectionate by day, but when they are asleep they like to spread out and have their own space, especially in the summer when it’s hot out. They tend to be very physically close when they talk and stuff before going to sleep in the evening, but once one of them starts to drift off, they usually move apart.

**sad headcanon**

Blink’s father was extremely, extremely abusive towards him, but he wasn’t always consistent about it. Blink has a handful of really good memories of his dad, and that almost confuses him more than the abusive ones, and causes him to turn a lot of his would be hatred towards his father inward. He and Mush were quite young when they first met, and he ended up telling Mush everything. Since Mush was just a kid at the time, who by some stroke of luck hadn’t had any experience in the kinds of things that Blink was telling him about, these confessions were good for Blink, but somewhat damaging for Mush. Mush managed and adapted, but the effect of Blink talking to him the way he did was rather like the effect showing a child a really gruesome horror movie that they were in no way ready for yet.

**happy headcanon**

When Blink is in a good mood, he’s incredibly lively and funny, and it’s infectious. He’s totally the kind of person to dance on a table. He can make a joke about anything, and he’s interested in new adventures and new experiences.

 **angry/violent headcanon**

Blink’s hair trigger temper gets him in more trouble than anything else. When he first got to the lodging house he was treated badly by the older kids already there, so his first instinct is to fight to defend himself, and that comes out even in situations where self defense isn’t really needed. His dad was also the kind of person to hit when he as angry, so as a small child that was the way Blink observed people dealing with their emotions. He’s overall a very kind person, and this is something he’s working on. There’s a part of him that’s truly afraid that something is fundamentally broken about him, and that he’ll go too far and do serious damage one day. Blink, in general, has very poor impulse control.

**Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon**

As a grown up, Blink starts to realize that he has autonomy, that he can take care of himself, and that he can make decisions about how he wants his living place to look. It starts out sparse and messy when he and Mush first move in together, then a lightbulb kind of goes of in his head, and he realizes that, insofar as he can afford it, he can have any kinds of paintings, or knickknacks, or decorating scheme he wants. Their apartment suddenly starts to get a lot nicer, albeit rather bizarre and eclectic.

**romantic headcanon**

Blink is bisexual, and demiromantic. The only person he’s really in love with is Mush, but the falling in love bit doesn’t come until they’re much older, and happens years after they reach the ‘best friends who sometimes kiss’ stage of their relationship. Blink sometimes dates around outside of Mush (with Mush’s full knowledge and consent), but Mush is his primary relationship.

**family headcanon ******

****Mush. The two of them are a little co-defendant in that respect. It comes from the two of them realizing that they each had never had anybody else to rely on unconditionally, and becoming that for each other.** **

******friendship headcanon** ** **

****Blink has a lot of close friends. As he gets older, he becomes a good person for his friends to go to with their problems. He’s understanding, and he doesn’t judge. He’s very protective of his friends, as we see during the rally scene, when he tries to help Jack escape.** **

******quirks/hobbies headcanon** ** **

****Blink goes through lots of intense, but short lived hobbies. Whenever he decides he likes something, that thing suddenly becomes his favorite thing in the whole world, and he loves it with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Sometimes that thing is stick ball. Sometimes it is vaudeville. Jack had a lot of fun that one time he lent Blink some dime novels, and Blink got into his head that westerns were the most important thing ever for all of a week and a half.** **

******likes/dislikes headcanon**  
Blink likes summer, but hates winter. He likes ice cream, steak, and fried eggs. He hates cats and is slightly afraid of them. He hates coffee. He likes babies. If he happens to make a baby smile during the course of a day, he’ll feel good about it for hours. He doesn’t want any babies of his own, though. He loves flirting, as long as the other person flirts back (he loses interest very quickly when it s unreciprocated, but just about anybody could start flirting with him, and he’d flirt back happily.). He’s one of the few people who finds Crutchy obnoxious… In all fairness, sometimes Crutchy purposely provokes him. He’s one of the few people in the lodging house who is kind of fond of Snitch. He’s a huge fan of Jack, David, Mush, Itey, Dutchy, and Specs. Also Medda. He thinks Medda is the greatest.** **

******childhood headcanon** ** **

****Blink lost his eye trying to set off firecrackers (which, by the way, have totally existed in the United States since at least 1777). One of them was faulty, so instead of flying up and away from him, it ended up flying into him. He hid behind a trashcan after it happened, and was found a few days later, feverish and confused. He was treated at the Refuge. He was there for rehabilitation, not because of criminal activity, so his experience of the Refuge was quite different than that of a lot of other kids. He needed to be tied down for a few days when he first got there to keep him from further injuring himself, and that was terrifying, but after that it was mostly okay. He was reasonably well taken care of, and is on the books as a Refuge success story. He went on to become a newsie as soon as he got out.** **

******old age/aging headcanon** ** **

****Blink outlives Mush, who dies during WWI. He still writes letters to him occasionally from that point onwards, when there’s something he really needs to tell somebody.** **

******cooking/food headcanon** ** **

****Blink’s relationship with cooking is a lot like his relationship with his living quarters. He’s very lazy about it, until he suddenly realizes that with just a little effort, he can basically eat whatever he wants. As a result, Blink learns how to cook pretty well.** **

****

******appearance headcanon** ** **

****Blink has a glass eye. However, it looks very much unlike his real eye, so he usually just hides it with the patch.** **


	5. Kid Blink 3

a HEALTH headcanon  
When Mush catches measles and is quarantined, Blink convinces Kloppman (and everybody else) that he’s had it before, so that he can go keep Mush company. He ends up getting so much sicker than Mush does.

 

a CHILDHOOD headcanon  
His early childhood was very very rough. He prefers not to think of it. As an adult, he half convinces himself that his life started at the age of 12, when he arrived at the newsboys’ lodging house. He remembers what went on before that, but it’s hard for him to process.

a HAPPINESS headcanon  
Blink is one of those people who can’t hide his emotions. On good days his resting facial expression is a huge cheerful grin. When he’s happy he jumps all over the place, and laughs, and hangs off of banisters. Cheerful Blink brings the party in.

 

an ANGER headcanon  
Blink’s temper is quick and explosive. It scares him. It isn’t safe or healthy. On the bright side, it burns out quickly. Blink doesn’t hold grudges. In general, the older he gets the better he gets at managing outbursts.

 

a BODY headcanon  
Blink is physically one of the strongest newsies. Mush and Pie Eater beat him at that. He and Jack are fairly evenly matched, but Jack has better aim.

a MENTAL STATE headcanon  
Every thought or emotion that enters his head is followed by at least 37 exclamation points.

 

a LOVE/SEXUALITY headcanon.  
Blink is bi as hell. In modern AU he and Mush start dating in high school, and end up getting viewed as the school’s Very Official and Shiny Gay Couple, and High Ambassadors of the Gay Agenda (with all the rainbows and stereotypes that go with it). It’s not actually the best thing for them, because Blink likes the attention and tries to fit the role, but he’s bi and Mush is ace (and also questioning some gender stuff), and the whole thing is confusing because they are also still kids at that point.

 

a RELIGION headcanon  
Blink finds religion confusing and troubling, particularly the idea of judgement. He’s not entirely sure whether he’s done bad things in his life, or bad things have happened to him, or both. He knows Mush is religious and prays a lot. Sometimes if he tells Mush a secret he’ll ask him not to pray about it later, because he doesn’t necessarily consider some of the things he tells his best friend to be God’s business.

 

a PET PEEVE headcanon  
His pet peeves change on an hourly basis. What bothered him while he was getting ready for work on Tuesday morning might be has favorite thing by Saturday afternoon. One thing he consistently hates is seeing people get bullied, and he’s one of the newsies most likely to step in and put a stop to bullying situations.

 

a FOOD headcanon

He is enthusiastic about meat, and only really eats vegetables because they keep appearing on his plate. He loves the idea of fruit, but when he buys it he buys too much, then forgets about it unless he shares it with others. He once bought a pineapple (not a common 1899 New York fruit) and nearly had an existential crisis about how to eat it (there was a lot of dramatic and uncomfortable gnawing involved).


	6. Top five Blink/Mush headcanons

\- They meet when they were very young, with Mush being around 11 and Blink being not quite 13. Blink comes from an exceedingly abusive background, and he enters the lodging house in pretty rough shape, but Mush takes a liking to him instantly, and is insistent about befriending him.

\- When they are younger Mush feels that he has to protect Blink, and just help him to push his way through the routines of lodging house life. After they grow up, Blink feels like he is the one who has to protect Mush. This isn’t because Mush is immature or can’t take care of himself, but because he is willfully kind and uncynical, and makes a concerted effort to see the best in people and in the world. Blink appreciates these qualities in Mush, but is afraid of Mush getting taken advantage of, or changing if the bad things in life get to be too much for him.

 

\- They know each other’s secrets. Mush doesn’t really have a lot in the way of deep dark skeletons in his closet. Blink has tons. Hearing about things that happened in Blink’s past is actually a lot harder on Mush than he lets on, not just because he cares about Blink, but because some of the things Blink speaks about are graphic and upsetting, and not the kinds of realities that Mush has ever had to face before.

 

\- Their relationship starts out as purely platonic friendship, and only gradually begins to morph into something else. Neither of them are entirely sure what that “something else” is, but each is the primary person in the other’s life, and they are happy together. Mush is asexual, and Blink is bisexual and demiromantic. Neither of them know the aforementioned terms, so they act on a mixture of instinct, trial and error, and outside influences that tell them what kind of relationships they are supposed to have. Their first kiss happens the day after the newsies strike, because watching Jack kiss Sarah spurs some questions in Mush in terms of what exactly is going on between him and Blink. They share occasional, relatively tame kisses after that, but physically don’t progress much beyond that. Blink is in his 20’s when the feeling that he’s in love with Mush starts to hit him, and it’s very very strange for him, because of course he’s always loved Mush in a way, but he still thinks that something is different than before. They have an open relationship. Blink has a fair amount of flings with other people, and they’re both fine with that.

\- David is weirdly invested in the Blink/Mush relationship. Blink and Mush don’t exactly understand his preoccupation with it. There’s a point where Blink thinks that David is acting strange because he means to out them, and then after that another point when he thinks that David has a crush on them both and wants in on the relationship. They eventually end up being among the few people who David feels he can talk to about his feelings for Jack. David is just glad he’s not alone in having feelings for another boy


	7. Boots (1992) headcanon list

Boots lived with his mother until she died of consumption, when he was about four. Even at that young age, he could tell she was sick, though she did her best to make light of it and to take care of him, right up until the end.

\- after that he went to live with his great aunt (totally Jackkellystories’ idea) in the Bronx.

\- His great aunt was from his father’s side of the family. Boots had no memory of his father, but his great aunt told him everything he could have ever wanted to know, from his father’s favorite meals, to how happy his dad was on the day Boots was born. His dad was illiterate for most of his life, but he wanted his son to know how to read, so he fought tooth and nail to gain some basic literacy himself, after his baby was born, hoping to then teach the child himself.

\- Boots’ father died in an accident at the factory where he worked.

\- Boots’ great aunt was old when she took Boots in. I mean really old. Like eighty. When she first took him in she was in decent health for somebody her age, but she knew that she would probably not live long enough to see him through to adulthood. She did her best to make him strong and independent, to teach him good morals, and to let him get a little book learning as well, to honer Boots’ father’s wish that he would be literate.

\- Boots was seven when he first started to work shining shoes. His aunt was adamant that any money he made was his, and that he could make his own choices, but that he should probably save it up for when she eventually died.

\- Even when Boots was very tiny, a lot of his aunt’s sentences started out “When I die…”, followed by instructions on what to do when that finally occurred. Because of that, and because of having been in the room with his mother when she died, little Boots expected his aunt to go any minute. He got in the habit of checking her breathing several times a night, just to make sure she was still alive. As he got older, however, he began to feel like his aunt was almost immortal, because for all she talked about her eventual demise, it never happened.

\- By the time Boots was nearing thirteen, his aunt’s health was failing fast. As much as she insisted that Boots shouldn’t spend money on her, he took over things like rent and buying food and medicine, using the money he’d been saving religiously since he was little.

\- Boots’ aunt passed away about three months after getting sick. Prior to that he’d thought he knew what the physical act of dying looked like, because he’d seen it with his mother, but the process was different with his aunt in some ways. Having seen the physical act of death from two people he loved, and even supported them through it, is something that weighed heavily on Boots. Like, on one hand, it made him feel like he was a grown-up with a strong understanding of the world and the whole living process, but on the other hand it made it hard for him to sleep at night.

\- Boots was low on cash after his aunt died, but he wanted to keep the apartment. He didn’t think he could make up the month’s rent by shining shoes, so he decided to find an “adult” job in a factory or a sweatshop. This proved harder than he expected. Some factories wouldn’t hire him because he was black, some wanted to pay him lower, some were very blatant and open about their discriminatory practices, and others pretended said practices didn’t exist while still enforcing them. After a while, and some negotiating, Boots found a place he thought he could work at, with a wage he thought would be enough to live off of.

\- The factory completely screwed him over. The place moved buildings to avoid being shut down, and didn’t tell Boots where they were moving to. He just showed up at work one day, and work wasn’t there. He never got paid for the work he did, so he ended up losing the apartment.

\- In all honesty, he might have been able to negotiate something about the apartment, but he was thoroughly disgusted, discouraged, and just plain sad after the problem with the factory. He wanted to go somewhere different, where he wouldn’t be constantly faced with reminders of the home and family he’d lost. He packed up his few possessions, and went to Manhattan.

\- Boots decided that he wouldn’t ever work for another person again, if he could help it. He brought his shoe shining kit with him to Manhattan, since it had always served him well.

\- Initially Boots was sleeping on the streets. He had sort of an odd idea of doing that until he had enough money to rent his own place. As much as he’d been through a lot of hard things in his life, he’d also always lived a certain way, and been taken care of for the most part, so he was looking to get back to something like that, only on his own. His experience with the factory made him feel like he’d have to negotiate and fight for everything, and even though he’d heard a little about lodging houses and things, the idea didn’t appeal to him.

\- One night while Boots was sleeping, a group of three other boys tried to steal his money and his boots. He woke up, and ended up fighting tooth and nail to keep his things. In the end Boots managed to keep hold of his boots, but not his money. He was also beaten up pretty badly, and that’s around the point where he discovered that the sight of blood, even his own, made him sick.

\- Swifty met him the next day, and sat down to talk to him, seeing he was in a bad way. He had a vague idea of sneaking off with Boots’ shoe shining kit, but he knew that was the kind of impulse he’d never act on, even if it would be easy. But anyway, he sat with Boots for a while contemplating just how easy a steal it would be, then ended up inviting him to the lodging house, and even paying his first night there.

\- It took Boots a little while to warm up to the other boys there. Even though he’s friends with them and basically trusts them by the time we meet him in Newsies, he still sleeps holding on to his Boots, and with all the money he has on his person. Some of the guys will “steal” things and hide them from the others as a joke, but they know better than to do this with Boots.

\- Boots isn’t actually that young in Newsies. He’s fourteen, and only a year younger than Mush. He looks little, though, and he’s glad of it, because it helps him sell papers. He also feels safer presenting himself as just a kid, even if emotionally he feels a lot older than Jack, David, Mush, or Blink.

\- His aunt taught him not to lie, not to smoke, not to cheat, to keep himself clean, and to be polite to others. These are all things he tries to uphold even when it would be more convenient not to, for the sake of her memory if nothing else.

\- in the lodging house, he’s friends with Snipeshooter, but he thinks he’s foolish. He’s friends with Jack, but he thinks he’s a liar and disapproves of it (and was so mad at himself when Jack scabbed, for putting his trust in someone he knew to be dishonest.). He becomes friends with David, even though he thinks David is sheltered and just a bit of a stick in the mud. Boots judges people, but he keeps it to himself.

\- Boots is sarcastic as hell, but it’s not directed towards anybody in a mean way.

\- He’s known for giving solid, but sometimes a little blunt, advice.

\- He borrows books from David sometimes, but he makes less of a show of doing it than Skittery does.

\- He wants a family almost as badly as Jack.

\- As they get older, Boots becomes close friends with Les, but at the same time is constantly in awe of the things Les does and gets away with it.


	8. Bumlets headcanon list 1

\- He’s got a family, and he’s on good terms with them. He’s the oldest of many children, but his mom and dad can’t really afford to keep so many kids fed and clothed, or find a place for them in their tiny one room apartment, so he goes to work. He spends most nights at the lodging house, because he has his own bed there, and people stay out of his hair and let him do what he wants, but he also goes to see his family a couple times a week.

\- His parents think of him as a grown man, even though he’s only sixteen

\- He doesn’t always feel very manly, but he does his best to just ignore that and get on with things.

\- He gives his family at least half of what he earns.

\- His mother is very proud of him.

\- He taught himself to read and write. He also taught himself English (they speak Spanish at home). He tried bugging Dutchy to teach him Dutch, but Dutchy is a terrible teacher, and he ended up with just a jumble of random Dutch phrases, like ‘Hello’, 'top bunk’, 'floor’, 'window’, and 'chicken’. Itey teaching him Italian went a little better, and he can carry out a few basic Italian conversations.

\- He’s not shy, but he is introverted. He prefers to listen to people talk rather than speak himself, and he disappears to be on his own a lot.

\- When he does talk people tend to listen, because they know he really has something to say.

\- He has a lot of self confidence. He thinks that he is good enough and smart enough. He believes he has some talent and will make it some day.

\- He is friendly with the other newsies. He’s polite, laughs at the right times, and doesn’t make waves.

\- He is friends with more non-newsies than any of the other Newsies. The Newsies feel like he’s around them all the time and they don’t know a lot about him, and are then confused to find out that he has tons of friends around the city.

\- He knows he’s attractive, but he genuinely doesn’t understand why (like what about him specifically people are looking at). Some people look at him too long, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, so he just smiles at them.

\- He lives for dancing. He just loves it. He doesn’t even need music. He’s always devising new moves and routines.

\- He gets along very very well with Swifty, but he’s not sure if that is a friendship he wants to cultivate.

\- His dream in life is to make a good enough living by dancing that he can afford a little apartment all of his own, and to be able to not have to worry about not being able to afford basic things like food and sturdy shoes that won’t wear out.


	9. Bumlets headcanon list 2

****** BUMLETS **********  
*1) Something this character is truly proud of.*

His dancing. His agility and coordination.

*2) Who they want to please the most. *

Bumlets cares a lot about how his family perceives him. He didn’t get noticed much by his parents when he lived at home, but since he struck out on his own and started coming back with some money and some accomplishments, they act very proud of him, and he’d hate for that to change. The positive regard of his sisters is also important to him.

*3) Who depends on them. *

His family was scraping by before he started adding to their income, and would probably continue to scrape by if he stopped, but he definitely makes things more comfortable for them.

 

*4) What they would do if they had one month to live. *

That would make him very depressed. So much of what keeps him going is the act of developing his skills so that he can eventually pursue his dreams. If he knew he didn’t have enough time to do that, he wouldn’t know what to do with the time that he did have.

*5) A cherished personal belonging. * His shoes. He scrimps and saves to buy decent ones. He’s also really proud of his cane. It was a good find.

*6) Something they lost, but would love to have back* His childhood. A lot of the newsies still see themselves as kids, and he’s a little jealous of that sometimes. His mother claims that he is a grown man, so he feels obligated to see himself as such. He has a surplus of energy, which translates into a lot of minor slip ups in the whole 16-years-old-but-totally-a-grown-up thing.

*7) This character’s favorite character* D'Artagnan from the Three Musketeers.

*8) What kind of car they would drive. * It’s 1899 and he is an impoverished newsboy. He does not have a car.

*9) What calms them when they are upset. * Dancing, though if he’s really upset, it tends to be more a matter of working on the same step over and over and over again until his mind clears. It’s a repetitive movement thing.

*10) How they deal with pain. * He tries to actually take care of physical pain insofar as he has the means to, because he doesn’t want some kind of small illness or injury to blow up in his face. Emotional pain he tries to ignore. He gets angry. Not violently so, but snappish and a little unkind.

*11) This character’s favorite piece or pieces of clothing. * He doesn’t like any of his clothes much. They don’t feel quite right to him.

 

*12) How they sleep. * In a different position every night. He’s a really light sleeper, and that bothers him. The other boys wake him up a lot.

*13) What kind of parent they would be. *. He’d want to make sure he could be present and provide the resources that a kid needed before having one. In all honesty, though, he’d rather not have a child.

*14) How they did in school*. He never went to school, except for night classes in English when he first moved out of his family’s apartment. He didn’t do badly at that, but he wasn’t a total beginner at the time. .

*15) What cologne or perfume they would use*. He assumes that the main point of cologne is to hide the fact that you haven’t showered in a while. He prefers to just keep himself clean.

*16) Their sexuality*. On the ace spectrum somewhere. Maybe demi.

*17) What they’d sing at karaoke*. Nothing. He’s not good at singing, and he knows it.

*18) Special talents they have* spinning on ceiling fans.

*19) When they feel safest*. When nobody is crowding him.

*20) Household chore they hate the most* cleaning under the bed.

*21) Their fondest childhood memory* He was best friends with the boy who lived across the hall from him. He used to spend a lot of nights over at his house, and this boy’s mom would sew and tell them ghost stories.

*22) How they spend their money. * family, food, lodging, shoes. He’d like to go to the theatre more, because he absolutely loves it, but money is tight.

*23) What kind of alcohol they drink*. Either nothing, or one or two shots of something strong. He likes the taste of wine, but he doesn’t enjoy sitting around and drinking it. He thinks beer is gross.

*24) What they wish they could change about themselves*. He is shy in social situations, and his shyness is sometimes taken as arrogance. He also has a talent for attracting unwanted romantic advances, and that bugs him.

*25) What other people wish they could change about them*. He is the most unflirtatious person ever, and there are quite a few people who would like to see that change.


	10. Crutchie ( Broadway )

*What does their bedroom look like?*  
Crutchie lives at the lodging house, so he doesn’t have a bedroom all his own. The only space that is really his is his bed, and even that could technically go to any boy who wanted to pay for a night’s lodging, but the rest of the Newsies are pretty good at making sure that the regulars get to keep their bunks from one night to the next. He has a few things that he keeps in a bag near his bed. Mostly its clothing, but he has a few clippings of newspaper articles he’s liked (and most importantly, a copy of the Newsies banner), and a broach that was made out of his mother’s hair.

*Do they have any daily rituals?*  
If he’s sleeping inside the lodge, he goes up to the roof to say goodnight to Jack. If he’s sleeping up on the roof with Jack, he makes sure to say goodnight to the boys inside the bunk room. Either way, this always takes longer than planned, and he frequently ends up involved in a long conversation with somebody, or lots of somebodies. Jack is well aware that if Crutchie says “I’ll be right up!” what it really means is that he’ll be around in an hour or so, probably with some news of the trouble Elmer got in that day, or a colorful description of the dog that Specs saw on his way to dinner.

*Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?*  
Crutchie has some chronic pain issues that aren’t entirely limited to his leg. Just going out and doing his job can tire him out on bad days. In the winter especially his joints tend to get stiff, and he finds that moving around a lot helps (and isn’t always exactly comfortable, but keeps things from getting worse), so he’ll do little things just to keep in motion.

*What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?*  
Suggest to whoever is currently using the kitchen that they pool their resources, and make an even better dinner.

*Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)*  
He’s neither the cleanest nor the dirtiest of the newsies. If he had his own place, it would take him a while to learn how to keep it neat, but only because he’s used to having next to nothing to take care of. If he had one plate, one cup, and one set of silverware, he’d do fine at washing those between uses, but if he had a dozen of each, his kitchen sink would quickly become a disaster of epic proportions.

*Eating habits and sample daily menu*  
Breakfast comes from the nuns. Lunch usually isn’t much, because he can’t afford much. He pays for dinner at the lodging house, and it’s usually decent, and always hot. Sometimes he will save a bit of his dinner for lunch the next day, if it’s something easily pocketed. Jack tries to slip him leftovers, but he’s only able to do it by convincing Crutchie that he’s a picky eater. Crutchie himself is not a picky eater, but he absolutely hates onions.

*Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time*  
Talking to people, looking at pretty things, and then talking to people some more. Crutchie finds a lot of things pretty. He’s been distracted by wrought iron fences before, and don’t even get me started on clouds, and flowers. This one time he found a crack in the pavement that was shaped like a heart. Crutchie is usually cheerful when the time is being wasted, but then worried when he realizes how much time has passed, and that he literally has no way to make up for it, because he can’t run to his next destination that way some of the other newsies might.  
*Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging*  
He loves gingerbread cookies. He finds indulging more fun if he can share it with a friend.

*Makeup?*  
All that dirt contours his cheekbones very nicely, but he doesn’t do it on purpose.

*Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?*  
Crutchie is really worried that if anybody thinks he can’t take care of himself, he’ll get locked up in the Refuge, and the worry isn’t completely unfounded. As a result he overcompensates, and even then he doesn’t feel entirely secure. On the flip side of that coin, his friends are under the delusion that having a limp makes things easier for him, so once again he finds himself overcompensating to prove to them that he’s doing things on his own merit. He doesn’t feel comfortable showing weakness or asking for help. I do think that Crutchie is somewhat self-aware on this front, but he doesn’t really see a way around it.

I also see him as getting a bit of PTSD after the whole Refuge incident, and being genuinely surprised by it. Right after the strike he’s feeling on a high, and pretty triumphant. He came out on top, his friends came out on top, and he knows it. He even got to be the one to snap the handcuffs on Snyder. The nightmares don’t set in until more than a month after, and he tries to make light of them because that’s what Crutchie does, but they are really hard to deal with.

*Intellectual pursuits?*  
Not really. At least he’s not intellectual for the sake of being intellectual. He’s thoughtful, and enjoys a good story. He has ideas about the world, the news, and politics. He likes listening to Davey talk about the things that he learns in school, but that’s more out of interest in Davey than his studies. He pursues life, and he pursues happiness, but he doesn’t pursue intellect.

*Favorite book genre?*  
Anything with a lot of pictures. He can read, but doesn’t always find it that exciting. Crutchie is a really visual person, and appreciates a good picture. Sometimes Jack will read him a passage or two from a story he loves, and Crutchie enjoys that, but mostly because he likes watching Jack get excited.

*Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?*  
Bi/Pan, but with leanings towards masculine presenting people. If his friends are happy, he’s happy for them, and he’d never look down on somebody for their sexual / romantic orientation, even in 1899 when he probably wouldn’t have a strong understanding of most of that stuff.

*Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)*.   
His leg is the obvious one. He also deals with some degree of chronic pain.

*Biggest and smallest short term goal?*  
He just wants to get through the day, make enough money to eat, and be happy. Oh, and he probably at any given moment is quietly planning the ultimate belated April Fools prank, with Finch as his coconspirator, but shhh. The big thing they need to work out is how they are going to get 500 butterflies into the lodging house, but once they figure out a way around that small setback, their plan is foolproof and sure to result in untold hilarity. 

Biggest and smallest long term goal?  
He gets involved in juvenile prison reform after newsies, and programs to help kids on the street who might not be able to make it on their own due to whatever physical or mental setbacks they happen to have. Mostly he serves as a voice to let those in power know more about what is needed, but he cares about it a lot. That’s his big goal. His small goal is to get to know Davey better.

*Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress*  
He tends to re-wear the same clothes most days, because he has some sensory things going on, and comfort is important.

*Favorite beverage?*  
Hot chocolate, not that he gets a lot of it. One time Davey told him about the health benefits of drinking a lot of water, and suddenly water became ten times awesomer.

*What do they think about before falling asleep at night?*  
His day. People he met. Things he saw. Delicious imaginary breakfasts. He’s also been known to fall asleep talking to people, usually Jack, who gets really talkative seemingly whenever Crutchie is ready to konk out for the night. The things Jack talks about when Crutchie is half asleep tend to be really nice, but Crutchie is never sure come morning whether or not he dreamt them

*Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?*  
All of them. Crutchie managed to get pretty much all the childhood illnesses, but especially polio. He lost his parents somewhere in the process. His mother left him at a hospital, and never came back. By the time we meet him in newsies, however, Crutchie is immune to most of the bugs that sweep across the lodging house, so whenever his friends start coming down with scarlet fever or whooping cough or whatever, Crutchie mostly manages to go on with business as usual.

*Turn-ons? Turn-offs?*  
Crutchie likes dreamers and visionaries. He doesn’t like being manhandled or treated as subordinate.

*Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?*  
He’d save it as a gift for Jack, especially the pencil, because Jack goes through drawing pencils like nobody’s business.

*How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?*  
Not that organized, but he doesn’t own anything to keep in order, so it works out for him.

*Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?*  
He’s better at math than he realizes, but it’s all practical life stuff. Modern AU Crutchie would be a decent student, but not spectacular, and a lot more interested in the interpersonal aspects of school.

*How do they see themselves 5 years from today?*  
Maybe running a little shop or something.

*Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?*  
He assumes he will find a way to scrape by, because he always has. Unfortunately, contingency plans are a luxury he can’t afford. Surviving by determination and the skin of his teeth is the way of things, and he plans to continue.

*What is their biggest regret?*  
That he never got to talk to Pulitzer during the strike. He had a few choice words for him, and they didn’t seem like the thing to say when he finally was introduced to the guy as a friend of Katherine’s.

*Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?*  
His best friend is Jack. He doesn’t have a lot of love for the Delancey brothers, and he has a deep distrust of law enforcement.

*Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)*  
Try to get the attention of somebody who can stop the fire.

*Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)*  
People are key in Crutchie’s life. It could take him years to get used to the idea that somebody he loved wasn’t there anymore, and he’d very much be the kind of person to write letters to the deceased, or hold conversations with grave stones. He’d keep going, but he also wouldn’t let go of that person.

*Most prized possession?*  
The crutch isn’t prized, but it’s necessary, and he sees it as a good thing because it helps him get where he wants to go. He’s also got this mega snazzy copy of the newsies banner.

*Thoughts on material possessions in general?*  
He wouldn’t know what to do with a lot of them.

*Concept of home and family?*  
He doesn’t need folks. He’s got friends. :)

*Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)*  
It’s really easy for the other newsies to mistake Crutchie for somebody who has no secrets, no sense of privacy, and is completely willing to talk anybody’s ear off about anything, TMI be dammed. Actually, he keeps a ton of stuff to himself. He doesn’t tell others when he’s in pain, or afraid, or sad about something. Also, Crutchie seems very talkative because he’s so bubbly and involved in everything, but a lot of what he does is listening and encouraging other people to say what’s on their minds. He doesn’t say that much of his own story, but he’s incredibly responsive to what other people tell him. Jack knows about ten times more about Crutchie than anyone else, and there is still tons that he’s unaware of.

*What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?*  
There are some parts of the city that he’d like to visit more, because they are nice and interesting, but they also happen to be lousy selling spots, so…

*What makes them feel guilty?*  
He can’t always help his friends out much in a crisis. He worries about slowing people down when they’re going someplace together.

*Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?*  
Emotional.

*What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?*  
Jack, but he tries not to take advantageous of that too much, because Jack does that for a lot of people.

*Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?*  
Neither really. He has a fairly realistic view of himself.

*How misanthropic are they?*  
Occasionally he gets it into his head that he’d like some time alone, so he sleeps on the street or something.

*Hobbies?*  
He’s not half bad at cards.

*How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?*  
No formal education. He can read and write some. He assumes school stuffs you full of genius, hence Davey being so smart. He’s genuinely surprised when Davey doesn’t know things. What do you mean Davey can’t perform brain surgery while simultaneously balancing a checkbook and training that wayward poodle over there to burp the alphabet?? He went to ~school~!  
(Eventually Davey will tell Crutchie some things about school, and his opinion of the whole institution will change.)

*Religion?*  
He thinks God must have a sense of humor, and considers chipmunks proof (because nothing says hilarious like chipmunk cheeks).

*Superstitions or views on the occult?*  
There is no lodging house ghost, but he’s left out a saucer of milk for it just incase.

*Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?*  
Both.

*If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?*  
Idealists. Dreamers. People who have a way with words. Good people. People who are full of life and vitality.

*How do they express love?*  
Unflagging loyalty.

*If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?*  
Bruised and battered. That’s not to say he’s never gotten a hit in.

*Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?*  
He’s been close to dying before. It hurt, and apparently caused the people who were supposed to care for him to run away. Living forever sounds like a much more pleasant alternative.


	11. Crutchie (Broadway) 2

a HEALTH headcanon  
Crutchie got every cold, flu, and childhood illness imaginable when he was very little. Somehow this ended with Crutchie having a wicked immune system by the time he hit his teens, and being the one to usually stay healthy during outbreaks of illness in the lodging house. When he does get sick, however, it tends towards severe.

a CHILDHOOD headcanon  
When Crutchie was about ten, he created a mythical city that just happened to look a lot like New York, only with hidden magic. It was very specific. Like, there were mermaids in the Hudson River, but only in a very specific spot where they congregated at 7 PM on Tuesdays and spread mer-news (printed on semi transparent paper made out of seaweed). The heat that came out of sewer grates was dragons, and the bad smell around some of the tenements was goblins (who were tricksters, but generally speaking more stinky than evil). Although Crutchie was super talkative, he generally spoke about other things with people. He eventually mentions it to Jack, some time after the events of newsies, and Jack makes some incredible paintings based on it.

a HAPPINESS headcanon  
One time Davey asked Crutchie what made him happy. He shyly responded with “you do,” and then went on to list Jack and Katherine, some nice stories he’d read in the news, a vast array of weather conditions, animals, and all manner of things. He did not mention to Davey that the main thing that kept him happy was his determination to be that way, and sheer stubborn insistence on his part. He also didn’t say that he fakes happiness even when he’s scared, sad, or in pain, because he feels like that’s what his friends need from him.

an ANGER headcanon  
Crutchie gets about as angry as any of the other boys, but he doesn’t show it, because he feels physically vulnerable and is afraid that his anger will make him a target. Nobody would ever guess it, but Crutchie can hold grudges. However, if somebody is truly sorry, or if they wronged him in a way that was obviously accidental, he’s quick to forgive.

a BODY headcanon  
Crutchie has so so many freckles.

a MENTAL STATE headcanon  
Very very people oriented. Also determined.

 

a LOVE/SEXUALITY headcanon.  
He loves his friends very very deeply, to the point where the main difference between romantic love and friend love for him is what the other person wants. He’s not exactly pining for his relationship with Jack, Davey, and/or Katherine to become a romance thing, but he’d enjoy the hell out of it if it did. He also enjoys the hell out of platonic friendship, but kissing is extra especially great.

 

a RELIGION headcanon  
A nun at a charity hospital once told him he was Christian, but he’s pretty sure that his mother was Jewish, and that he celebrated Jewish holidays when he was very very little (the memories are hazy). He’s open minded, and thinks that people and kittens and leaves and things have to have come from somewhere. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was aliens. Heaven is a nice idea, but so is ice cream, and ice cream is a lot more immediate (plus you don’t have to die to get to it.). He tries to be a good person. His favorite person to talk about religion with is Davey, but he’s initially very shy about it, because he’s pretty sure that he had a religion and traditions and everything, but what if he’s wrong, or he’s lost them, and Davey judges him for it??

 

a PET PEEVE headcanon  
He’s not too fond of people assuming he uses the limp to sell papes, or attributing his successes to his crutch.

 

a FOOD headcanon   
He has such a sweet tooth. He also loves pickles.


	12. Crutchy (1992)

\- Crutchy is a lot of things, but he’s not all goodness and light.

\- He’s nice and polite to just about everybody, but a lot of the time it’s a defense mechanism, because he knows he’s not going to come out the champion in any fighting arena.

\- Crutchy is a master at doing terrible things to people he doesn’t like and not getting caught. Like, sure, he’ll refer to Snyder as “Mr. Warden Snyder sir” and suck up to him, but he will also do unmentionable things to his sauerkraut. And he’s just a master at pulling that kind of stuff, and it never gets traced back to him.

\- He feels safe around the other Newsies and is more likely to speak his mind around them.

\- He can get really snide when he’s in a position of power, but only with people who deserve it.

\- He is not a morning person at all.

\- He is pretty good at getting a sense of people. He can usually tell who is rotten and who isn’t. He can figure out when one of the Newies says or does the wrong thing because they don’t know any better, and when somebody is genuinely malicious.

\- Although there was a point in time when he thought Jack’s asshole behavior towards Weasel was unwarranted (any feud between Weasel and the Newsies was very much started and perpetuated by Jack. Weasel is the one who crossed a moral event horizon by the end of the show, because no adult has to right to treat a teenager the way Weasel does Jack by the end, but Jack started it.).

\- He’s good at picking up on when somebody needs a friend. He’s kind and forgiving towards those he considers friends. He sees the other Newsies as family.


	13. David Jacobs (1992)

\- Sarah is older than David by a little over a year.

\- Esther and Mayer were specifically hoping for one son and one daughter, so they were very happy when David was born. Obviously, this means David had a childhood that was very different than most of the other Newsies. He was loved and wanted from a young age, by parents who were poor but had the means to provide for him, and who weren’t perfect (because nobody is), but put their all into raising him.

\- David and his family are Jewish.

\- David’s best friend when he was little was Sarah. The Jacobs family was very close knit, and David preferred the company of family members to those outside the family.

\- Sarah tended towards more creative an imaginative play than David. David tended towards organizing things and getting angry if Sarah attempted to jam round pegs in square holes and the like.

\- David was definitely more prone to tantrums and things than Sarah was. He liked things very precise.

\- For a while Sarah and David both went to school. They were both really smart, and showed aptitude, but Sarah was slightly better at it, mostly because she was less likely to argue with her teachers and other classmates in a way that made them angry. She was just infinitely better at interpersonal stuff.

\- David was left-handed. His teachers tried to change him into a righty, but he never really committed, and it only worked when they were watching. When David is on his own, or just with Sarah, he writes with his left hand. Also he thinks his teachers are stupid for caring, and feels rather betrayed that his parents side with them (albeit only for the sake of having their son fit in).

\- Les was born when David was seven. Les was an accidental baby, but everybody was really excited to have him.

\- The Jacobs couldn’t actually afford another baby. Sarah and David were still sleeping in the same bed with their parents, and sharing everything they owned, aside from clothes. Most of David’s school things had been Sarah’s at one point.

\- While Esther was pregnant with Les, some of Sarah’s make-believe games took a darker turn. Case in point, she once performed an elaborate “ritual”, told David she had transferred the new baby’s soul into a teacup, and that he needed to feed it everyday or the baby would die. This caused David a lot of anxiety, and he fed the teacup religiously. The Jacobs parents were really mad at Sarah when they found out, and also discovered that not letting David continue to feed the teacup created near panic attack levels of worry in him. He still feels upset whenever he remembers that period in his life.

\- That said, it just goes to show that David completely dedicated himself to Les, from the very moment he came to know that he might be a thing. He’d had a lot of practice being a little brother at this point, and was bound and determined to succeed at being a big brother.

\- By the time Sarah was 11 it became evident that the family could only afford to send one child to school, and David, as a boy, was a better prospect. Sarah went to work at the lace factory with her mother. To add insult to injury, at least for Sarah, her father made the decision to pay to send David to a private school, instead of the tenement school they’d both been attending up until that point. The family wanted at least one of them to have a chance to make something of their life, instead of going to work in a factory, and all of the family dreams got poured into David. It was a matter of gender rather than aptitude, because while David *was* a good student, Sarah was better.

\- Getting along with other students was always a problem for David, but it wasn’t as bad at his old school. Part of it was that he blended in more, because the kids there all came from the same neighborhood as him, and were culturally similar (most of them were Jewish, a lot of them children of first generation immigrants, a lot of them with Eastern European roots, their parents were probably friends with David’s parents, all of them generally in similar financial straights.). Another part of it was that Sarah was not afraid to put anybody he teased her little brother in their place. David sensed that he wasn’t doing a -good- job of interacting with other kids, and he knew that it was a source of concern for his parents, but he dealt with it okay for the most part. He concentrated on his school work.

\- David did not get off to a good start at his new school. He had a tendency to talk over other kids in class, and act like a know it all. He turned things that should have been minor points into big debates. He tended to be blunt with people, not get their jokes, and go on and on about things that were very interesting to him, without really noticing cues that other people might not be interested. It was all mostly a matter of him missing lots and lots of social cues, very consistently.

\- There was also a degree of antisemitism. At first it was mostly very small microaggresions, or kids spouting negative stereotypes without fully realizing they were doing something offensive, and David getting upset about it. Eventually it escalated into one or two kids saying really awful things to David, and bringing his religion into it while they did it, but also claiming it was just to get a rise out of him because they didn’t like him, and that they wouldn’t act like that to a Jewish kid that they were friends with.

\- There was also a fair amount of garden variety bullying. It was self-perpetuating. Kids who were perfectly nice to each other came to learn that David was an acceptable target, and treating him as an object of scorn just started to be a thing.

\- David’s parents, especially his mom, mostly tried to give him advice on how to fit in better. They wanted him to be happy, but also to excel and not make waves.

\- David’s dad wanting him to conform and not make waves was always particularly difficult for David to take, because his dad was the one with all the radical political philosophies, and the one who talked about changing the world.

\- David’s parents always made it clear that he was loved, valued, and that they felt proud of him, but the bullying situation was something they could have handled better. They put a lot of the responsibility for changing it on him, when they shouldn’t have, and acted like it was more painful for them to know about than it was for him to go through.

\- The one time David acted out physically against one of his classmates, his father was livid. He did ask for David’s side of the story, but David was too upset to tell him.

\- David became increasingly anxious. A lot of it was the bullying, and a lot of it was the crushing feeling that his family was counting on him to succeed, and to succeed wildly enough to change their circumstances. Another part was that he just naturally had an anxiety disorder, which of course went undiagnosed since we’re talking about the 1890’s.

\- David’s anxiety began to manifest itself in physical ways. Mostly headaches and nausea. After he missed too much school because of it, his parents put their foot down and told him to stop lying and faking sick.

\- David got really bad at being able to tell the difference between actually being ill, and just being worried.

\- He also stopped talking to his parents about school. He presented them with perfect report cards, and figured that ought to be enough. If he was asked how school was going, he’d usually talk about what he was learning in history class, since that was his favorite subject, and also a major topic of interest for his father.

\- Sarah told him he’d make more friends if he asked more questions. It backfired.

\- The Jacobses were very much the kind of family who had family meetings, game nights, and read books together. Aside from not feeling like he could go to his parents about his school problems, David still had a good and supportive home life. Sometimes he genuinely wished he could just go make lace with Sarah and his mom, but he always felt guilty and ungrateful for thinking that way.

\- The night that Mayer injured his arm was one of the worst and scariest in the Jacobs home. There was a lot of scrambling to find money for the doctor, and tears when, only a few hours after the accident, Mayer was fired from his job. David was the one in the family who didn’t cry.

\- As upset as David was to see his father hurt, he also had a guilty hope of staying out of school as long as possible for it. Maybe indefinitely.

\- Making friends with the other newsies was not David’s goal. You might have noticed.

-Neither was starting a strike, but look what happened.

\- His family wasn’t really -that- surprised by the strike though. Strikes, labour unions, and worker’s rights were something of a pet interest for David. (Esther once tried to start a no discussion of labour unions at the dinner table rule, but got overruled by the rest of the family on that on that one).

\- Seize the Day was an important moment for David, because he was saying the things he wanted to say, to people his own age, and they were listening. It was one of the first time he interacted with peers in a way that wasn’t restrained and cautious. It’s also David’s first show of exuberance in the movie.

\- Becoming friends with Jack is also very very important. Jack is David’s first close friend outside of the family, and he treats him as a family member.

\- David isn’t very capable of having non-intense friendship. It’s a life or death matter. The newsies are his union and his brothers.

\- I don’t think I need to go too much into David’s character development in the movie, because we all know about it. During the course of the film Newsies, David learns to find his inner strength and power. He also learns how to loosen up and accept other people into his life, even when they have faults that he needs to come to terms with.

\- the movie isn’t the end of that process. David still has problems with anxiety. He still has a somewhat black and white view of morality. It takes him a long while to figure out that he isn’t in a position to judge the newsies for things they do, like lying, fighting, smoking/drinking, stealing, etc. he starts to recognize his privileged position among them before he really knows how to understand it, and what to do with it. He does his best, but he isn’t perfect.

\- The newsies are used to accepting people, vast differences, rough patches and all, and that’s what they do with David. He’s one of them, even though he’s had a different upbringing and his life brings him in different directions. None of the Newsies really came from the same background as the others, so David is just one more different person in a sea of different people. They all are a little outside a the rest of society.

\- Being with the Newsies changes David a lot. He relaxes more, and sleeps better. He feels healthier. He’s less restrained in his interactions with them, and his humor comes out more.

\- He is so attracted to Jack that it’s ridiculous. Jack is the first person David has ever really felt attracted to, or even thought of feeling attracted to.

\- The feeling is mutual. Jack is actually more cautious about it than David, because he sees David as having a future that he doesn’t.

\- Going back to school is hard on David. It’s really obvious to the other Newsies that it’s hard on him.

\- Denton continues to mentor David after the strike.

\- David’s goal in life is to have a white collar job that his parents would approve of, make enough money that they can retire and Les can stay in school, and somehow do all this without being miserable. It’s kind of overwhelming.

\- He also wants to be with Jack. He feels obligated to succeed in other ways, in order to make this okay.

\- He causes a lot of trouble in his life, but it’s the good kind. David Jacobs is a force to be reckoned with.


	14. David 2

Anonymous asked  
For the headcanon meme, can you do all of them for David? Thanks!  
☾ - sleep headcanon

David talks in his sleep, but only if other people are being loud, or if the lights are on. If somebody asks him questions while he’s sleeping, he’ll frequently give a reply of some kind. This makes him a little worried about falling asleep in the wrong place. Luckily, his replies don’t usually make much sense, but he doesn’t entirely trust himself not to spill his deepest darkest secrets in response to entirely innocuous questions.

 

\- sad headcanon

He vacillates between a sense of extreme superiority and a sense of extreme inferiority as a result to the way he was bullied at school. Sometimes he decides he doesn’t want to talk to people, and convinces himself it’s because he’s better than them anyway. At other times, he feels like he’s doing something wrong, and missing something crucial, and he just can’t figure out how to fix it, and assumes that this is because there is something fundamentally not right about him.

\- happy headcanon

During the strike, David doesn’t realize just how tired he is, or that the fight with the Delanceys has left his chest and stomach covered in bruises. He wakes up the day after, looks in the mirror, and just laughs, because he finally knows what success feels like, and every little mark and ache on his body is worth it.

☠ - angry/violent headcanon

Angry David tends to leave wherever he is in a huff, isolate himself, and plan revenge. He’s painfully passive aggressive. He can’t just react in the moment, so he tends to hold onto grudges for a long time.

\- Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

Left to his own devices, David is an organized mess. He always knows exactly where his stuff is, and there’s a system to it. He’s not one to leave dishes in the sink, or dirty clothes lying around. He is one to sleep at his desk for three nights in a row because his books are arranged on his bed in a specific order, and he doesn’t want to disturb them.

♡ - romantic headcanon

The speed and completeness with which David becomes infatuated with Jack really disturbs him. Logically, he doesn’t think Jack really ought to be his type.

♥ - family headcanon

David and his mom are very similar, in terms of personality. As a result, they butt heads a lot, but his mother will also take his side in arguments and things that he really doesn’t deserve to win. Esther treats Sarah like a young woman from the age of nine or so, but continues to baby David well into his teens.

☮ - friendship headcanon

As much as Jack is David’s primary relationship amongst the newsies, he genuinely values the friendships he forms with the rest of the group. Jack is surprised with the friendships that David forms, because he thinks that David will choose to pal around with the same people Jack himself pals around with (Crutchy, Race, Blink, Spot), but actually David gets along best with a handful of people who Jack finds a little dense, or a little boring (Mush, Skittery)

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

Artsy, creative pursuits of any kind are not David’s strong point. He loves random facts and trivia.

☯ - likes/dislikes headcanon

David likes being right, learning new things, winning, long conversations, comfortable silences, the way Jack conveniently has no concept of personal space, most of his mother’s cooking, books, cool weather, and the newsies. He dislikes forced social interaction, tomatoes, sweating, and the smell of laundry that hasn’t dried right.

\- childhood headcanon

Tiny David had more tantrums than the other two Jacobs children combined. He’s sort of embarrassed about that.

∇ -. old age/aging headcanon

David really comes into himself in his 30’s/40’s. He’s a lot happier as an adult than he ever was as a kid.

♒ - cooking/food headcanon

David’s cooking is really bland, but he likes it.

☼ - appearance headcanon

David starts getting gray hairs at a surprisingly young age.


	15. A ten adjective analysis of David Jacobs (1992)

So the way I’m going to do this is list the first ten adjectives that come to mind when I think of David, and then go back and explain them.

 

Loyal — David will do anything to his family. He’s very serious about looking after Les. When Sarah is being attacked by the Delanceys he doesn’t think twice about jumping into the fight to help her, even though he doesn’t stand a chance. Once he becomes friends with Jack he pours everything into that friendship. Even after finding out that Jack had been lying to him, he still risks his own safety to try and break Jack out of the Refuge. Once he commits to the strike, he stays loyal to the cause from beginning to end. Loyalty is also a trait he greatly values in others. David hits his low point in the movie when Denton tries to abandon the newsies and Jack scabs, because feeling betrayed is one of the most difficult things for him to deal with.

Principled — Pacifism is something David sticks to (except for when he has absolutely no choice). He believes in honesty. He tries to make sure that Les follows the Jacobs family house rules. Unfortunately, he sometimes takes a very black and white view of what is right and what is wrong. Coming to understand why the newsies lie, cheat, steal, and get into fights will be hard for him. David sees Jack’s lies first and foremost, and it will take him a long time to realize what created and necessitated those lies, and that it’s the world around Jack that should be condemned for them, rather than Jack himself.

Idealistic — if you want to see where all those ideals come pouring out, listen to the lyrics of “Seize the Day”.

Trustworthy — David doesn’t lie. He doesn’t cheat. He follows through. He wants to be trusted, so he tries to be the kind of person that those he cares about can believe in. He’s not always perfect, but he works at it, and does pretty well overall.

Sarcastic — “What do you mean, like a strike?” Often times David uses sarcasm as a mask, to hide the fact that he’s saying things he really believes in, in case those beliefs get rejected. Other times he’s just a snarky little brat.

Guarded - “I don’t even know you, and I don’t care to, so here are you papes.” David doesn’t expect people to like him. He doesn’t expect people to want to be his friend. He doesn’t trust people easily, especially people his own age, so he tries to protect himself.

Anxious - David worries a lot. He’s a perfectionist. He sets a high standard for himself, and he often feels overwhelmed. He has a hard time letting things go.

Manipulative - Check out the scene where Jack, David, and Sarah are asking Denton for help in printing the Newsies banner. Tell me David didn’t play a big role in orchestrating every line that passed between them to ensure Denton would be on their side. Between all the rules that David has to follow, he’s resorted to passive aggressive methods when he wants to get his way, and he is good at it.

Awkward - David Jacobs is the biggest dork to ever dork, and we love him for it. If you want to see everything that is wonderful about David Jacobs summed up in three seconds of footage, watch for that little fist pump he does at the end of Seize the Day. Then watch the look Jack gives him after. Then watch it another 27 times and don’t blame me for ruining your life. You know deep down that it was worth it.

Consistent - A David is a David is a David and he shall David until the end of time. He changes and develops throughout that movie, but he does so in his own terms. He’ll do the Newsies spit shake thing when he’s ready, and not a second before. He knows who he is, and what his boundaries are. Newsies isn’t about him developing into a new person. It’s about him getting better at being himself.


	16. Davey Jacobs ( Broadway )

*What does their bedroom look like?*  
His bedroom is partially curtained off from the rest of his family’s tenement. He has to share a bed with Les, but it’s bigger than the beds that the other newsies sleep in, and more comfortable. There’s a patchwork quilt on it that his grandma made. His mother chose most of the decorations. There’s a painting of a man with a waistcoat and a top hat that his mother put in the room because she thought he looked handsome, like she expected Davey to look once he grew into himself. Davey finds the painting creepy, because it seems to be staring at him. When Les, at the age of six, started talking about how the painting was scary, Davey felt super happy and validated. Les and Davey started turning the painting around, and hiding the painting in various places throughout the house, which there mother found funny, but their father found disrespectful and frivolous. Long story short, by the time we meet Davey in newsies, the painting is an unmovable fixture in Davey’s room, and he just tries to ignore it as best he can.

 

*Do they have any daily rituals?*  
The first thing Davey does every morning is make his bed, and the second thing he does is brush his teeth (his dad says he has awful morning breath if he doesn’t). He reads for fifteen minutes while he drinks his coffee, because those are the house rules, but he’s not a morning person, so he doesn’t retain much. He sort of hopes that those words he’s looking at are sticking in his subconscious mind somewhere. Then he eats breakfast, gets dressed/showered, brushes his teeth again, and goes out the door. He takes longer than the rest of his family to get ready, because he’s just not a morning person, and that is a reason for concern in his household. He writes a to do list for the next day before going to bed each night.

*Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?*  
His family lives on the eighth floor, so he climbs a lot of stairs. He also walks to and from school each day, which is about thirty-five minutes from his house. That counts for something, but compared to the other newsies he’s still not all that physically fit.

*What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?*  
Sigh and stare at the kitchen until it was free. Genuinely wonder why people seemed annoyed at him. Tap his foot. Assume he was being polite by not saying anything. Not realize he was actually being passive aggressive as hell. Begin to realize that whoever was in the kitchen was now purposely moving as slowly as possible. Roll his eyes. Agonize over whether or not he should just say something. Remind the person, a little too loudly, that excuse me other people needed to use the kitchen too. Realize almost immediately that, oh god, he’d said the wrong thing in the wrong way again and was now getting a withering look from whoever was in the kitchen before him. Watch as Les came dashing in and resolved the whole issue in like four seconds just by asking for his turn, and got a smile and a pat on the head out of it. Have no idea why it had gone that way.

On a side note, a lot of tenements had shared kitchens, so this could be a genuine scenario.

*Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)*  
He’s pretty neat and precise. His family expects him to be. One day after moving out, he’ll probably realize that nobody cares if he makes the bed, or drapes his coat over a chair, and it will be a revelation.

*Eating habits and sample daily menu*  
He eats what his mom cooks. She’s good at it. Breakfast is usually eggs, toast, and coffee. Lunch is a sandwich and an apple. Dinner is usually some kind of soup or stew.

*Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time*  
He loves reading, and once he makes friends with the newsies, just sitting around and talking about nothing and everything with them is really fun and new for him. He’s used to his life being fairly strict and regimented, so wasting time is new for him. It’s usually a matter of him getting caught up in enjoying himself, and then realizing just how many hours have passed, and feeling worried.

*Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging*  
Sleeping in, and reading in bed, but he’s really bad at indulging, because he’s been taught not to.

*Makeup?*  
If he were to try eyeliner, he’d probably like what he saw, but I don’t think that would come up in 1899.

*Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?*  
He has an anxiety disorder. He probably realizes that something is wrong, but chalks it up to him being somehow inadequate.

*Intellectual pursuits?*  
Totally. He likes knowing stuff. He thinks the encyclopedia is a fun read. Davey is full of random facts and trivia. He’s also super interested in politics (a lot of it influenced by his dad), and he’s very well read.

*Favorite book genre?*  
All of them? He likes things like “Vanity Fair” that tell a good story but with a heavy dose of sarcasm, and like Oscar Wilde because it’s moderately scandalous and some of the boys at the school aren’t allowed to read it, but he is, so he knows something they don’t.

*Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?*  
Homoromantic asexual. Modern AU Davey would be an outspoken activist, but historical Davey has no idea what is going on there, books aren’t telling him what he needs to know, and just feels uncomfortable. It gets better for him as he gets older, and even though books still aren’t telling him what he wants to know, he feels secure in his life and his relationships.

*Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.) *  
He’s mildly allergic to wool, and animals, and springtime. He tends to get nosebleeds in the winter. He might be mildly asthmatic?

*Biggest and smallest short term goal?*  
The biggest goal when he’s at school is to get his homework done/do well on tests, etc. when he’s a Newsie it’s to sell enough papers to keep food on the table, and make sure that Les doesn’t get into any serious trouble on the streets of New York. His smallest is not to mess up too badly that day.

*Biggest and smallest long term goal?*  
He wants to change the political landscape of New York City, especially for child workers, and other easily exploited populations. He also wants to graduate with good grades, and pay for Les to go to high school.

*Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress*  
His mother chooses his clothes. She likes for him to wear blue, or else nicely pressed white shirts and black vests. She thinks it makes him look handsome and respectable. Someday he’s going to move into his own apartment, and in an act of ultimate rebellion, buy a grey shirt. Take that, mom. He’ll still wear the stuff his mom bought him until it wears out, though, because he’s not wasteful. He cares very little about clothing, and will probably buy whatever is cheap and literally right in front of him, not always with the best results.

*Favorite beverage?*  
Coffee. He loves it.

*What do they think about before falling asleep at night?*  
How nice it would be to have his own bed. Musings on how Les manages to snore so loudly, considering how little he is.

 

*Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?*  
He got most of the normal ones, like chicken pox, measles, and various colds and things. His mother was the type to really overreact whenever he got sick. Like, she’d alternate between coddling him, and predicting his eventual death within ear shot, and scolding him for not wearing a scarf last Thursday.

*Turn-ons? Turn-offs?*  
He needs to feel in control of any potentially intimate situations. Not in a bossy sort of way, really. Just in a way where he knows what is going on, and nothing is going to go racing forward or explode on him.

*Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?*  
A to-do list.

*How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?*  
When he lives with his family, he has to be organized in the way that they want him to be. When he moves out, he’s organized in the way that he wants to be, which looks messier, but is much more suitable for him.

*Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?*  
He’s pretty fond of English and science. He’s excellent at math, but not excited about it.

*How do they see themselves 5 years from today?*  
As a productive member of society. Or counter-society maybe, because society sucks a lot of the time. Maybe he’ll change society. He’s a little fuzzy on the details.

*Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?*  
By the end of the newsies strike, he’s thinking about trying his hand at journalism. He’s talking to Katherine about it a lot. He feels odd and childish about it sometimes, because he and Katherine are close in age, but she already is building a professional career, and he’s still just a school kid, and there’s also the matter of how once he finishes school he’s going to have some unfair gender-based advantages that she doesn’t, but she’s encouraging. His plan is to get a job though, and he can’t imagine not getting one. He’s been told all his life that the reason he’s going to school is in order to get a job that’s better than anybody else in his family has had so far, and he assumes it’s going to happen. Most of his contingency plans come up when his father is injured, and they are about factory or sweatshop work, if his father doesn’t get better, and continuing his education isn’t an option.

*What is their biggest regret?*  
I don’t think Davey is good at keeping big regrets and small regrets in perspective. On any given day his major looming regret of the evening could be anything, from accidentally talking too much to somebody, to maybe forgetting to lock the door on his way out of his house a week ago.

*Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?*  
After the strike, he sees Jack, Crutchie, and Katherine as being really important friends to him, but it takes him a while to realize that he’s not the third wheel in any of the relationships those three have with each other. He gets bullied a lot at school, but tries to tell himself that none of the boys who do it are significant enough to warrant the term enemy, and he should save that for genuinely exploitive adult people like Snyder or Pulitzer.

*Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)*  
Probably something useful, like call the fire department, or try to put it out. His first instinct in a sudden extra personal crisis is to try and resolve it as quickly as possible, and to do whatever it takes towards that goal. He often forgets to be nervous, until all the stress of the situation hits him after.

*Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)*  
He’d do really badly. He might make it a couple of hours before crashing, particularly if he needed to look after Les, but he’d be bad at handling it. He’d try to get away from people to deal with it on his own, insofar as he could.

*Most prized possession?*  
His copy of the newsies banner is pretty nifty, but he’d feel like he really ought to say that the watch he inherited from his grandfather was his prize possession.

*Thoughts on material possessions in general?*  
He’s sort of obnoxious about how unimportant he considers them. He’s never had to do without the ones he needed.

*Concept of home and family?*  
Family comes first. I think his parents are very loving, but considerably stricter than his movie counterpart’s, and it takes him a while to realize that some of the restrictions and expectations placed on him in his home environment are part of what stresses him out so much, and that actually it is okay to relax a little and do things just for himself.

*Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)*  
He’s as private as he can be, as a person who lives in a house where he’s rarely alone.

*What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?*  
Sleep!

*What makes them feel guilty?*  
Not being able to talk to people effortlessly. He feels like he isn’t trying hard enough, because his family would really like him to have some friends, and for him to be friends with a specific sort of “nice” people that he doesn’t usually mix well with. Letting working on the streets as a Newsie take some of Les’ innocence. He’s more worldly after the strike, and Davey feels a little guilty about that.

*Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?*  
Analytical to a fault, a lot of the time. Sometimes the decisions just don’t get made. He doesn’t trust his instincts.

*What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?*  
He has no idea. He pushes himself until he can barely function, crashes, then starts again. Success tends to give him a burst of renewed energy, as does sleeping. He should really sleep more.

*Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?*  
Both. Sometimes at once.

*How misanthropic are they?*  
He doesn’t have a lot of options for time to himself, so he does go through stints of just not really feeling like interacting with others.

*Hobbies?*  
Reading. Making flash cards. Writing, a little.

*How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?*  
He’s part way through high school when we meet him in newsies, and it’s a somewhat prestigious school that his family really can’t afford. His parents consider education vitally important. After becoming a Newsie, I think he’d realize that it was an immense privilege, and one that opened doors, but didn’t have anything to do with intelligence or worthiness.

*Religion?*  
Jewish.

*Superstitions or views on the occult?*  
Stubborn disbelief.

*Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?*  
Words. At least the ones he wants to express. Sometimes he can’t help but express through body language things he really rather wouldn’t. It’s easy to tell by looking at Davey if he’s happy, or comfortable, or nervous, or scared, or what, and he wishes it wasn’t.

*If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?*  
Interesting, kind, charismatic people. People whose way of thinking and looking at the world surprises him. People with passion and belief. People who would get involved in a strike or a children’s crusade.

*How do they express love?*  
Nagging. If Davey Jacobs is worried about whether or not a person has drunk enough water that day, he probably loves that person. (Or that person lives in a place where clean water is scarce, but that’s a different kind of concern.)

*If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?*  
Pitiful. Davey should just avoid fist fights. Jack probably tries to teach him at some point, and realizes that it’s a lost cause.

*Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?*  
A little, because he’s not finished doing the things he wants to do yet, and his parents spent so much time taking care of him, that they ought to get something out of the investment.


	17. 10 Adjectives to describe Davey Jacobs (Broadway)

Idealistic - Davey is so painfully, wonderfully, endearingly idealistic, and all of this comes pouring out of him over the course of “Seize the Day”.

Brotherly - Les is a big focal point for Davey. His role as Les’ older brother is very important to him. Les and Davey are very much a team, and where one goes you can usually find the other.

Intelligent - Davey knows an absolute metric ton of random facts, probably on a huge variety of topics. He retains them. The big thing, though, is that he can apply them. Did you see how quickly he turned Jack’s comment about Pulitzer being a rattlesnake into a metaphor for Pulitzer’s fear? Really quickly. That’s ‘cause he’s smart.

Sheltered - Obviously Davey comes from a different background than the other newsies. That’s sort of the point. Everything about them is new to him.

Anxious - Take film David’s anxiety, multiply it by ten, and then you get musical Davey. I think that film David is anxious by nature, but he can hold it in and push past it, and only occasionally crashes. Musical Davey’s anxiety is a constant companion, and it makes life difficult for him. He usually feels at least a little overwhelmed and on edge, and he doesn’t hide it well.

Eloquent - That said, he’s prone to some very pretty turns of phrase, when he can get the words out. Again, listen to the lyrics of Seize the Day. Of course, he doesn’t think he’s eloquent at all, but I think his friends would recognize this in him. I bet any writing he did would be gorgeous.

Ungainly - I have this headcanon that Davey went through a massive growth spurt right before newsies, and he’s suddenly found himself this tall, lanky teenage creature that occasionally bumps his head against door frames. He’s not really physically used to himself and the space he takes up yet. He stands too close to people when he talks, and I’m sure he’s accidentally hit people in the face with errant hand gestures before.

Self-conscious. - Davey second guesses himself so much. He knows all his faults, and assumes there’s more that he didn’t notice. He thinks about, replays, and second guesses conversations that happened days before.

Fatalistic - “Nobody died!” I can’t really decide if that line is optimism or fatalism. It could be his idea of a silver lining, but I think he actually expected things to be worse. He just assumed death and destruction were the obvious outcome of the strike. Davey went into Newsies expecting a Les Mis style outcome, and he’s rather pleased things are going so well.

Determined: Give Davey a cause worth believing in, and he will follow through. Even if he’s terrified, and even if it’s difficult beyond his wildest imaginings, Davey has the tenacity required to do the thing.


	18. The Delanceys (1992)

\- The thing between the Delanceys and the Newsies was actually started by Jack. At least the Delanceys think so. Sure, they made some snide comments, and maybe they were a bit rough when it came to keeping the Newsies in line, but Jack took things to another level.

\- Jack thinks they were rude to little kids, and deserved to be taught a lesson. If they’d kept their nastiness to the older kids who could deal with it better, Jack probably would have just stayed out of their way.

\- They look out for each other. They are capable to being kind to each other. They see it as a matter of themselves against the world. Their family treated them really badly, and they each learned early on that they couldn’t trust and rely on anybody other than one another.

\- That doesn’t make anything they did excusable.

\- They have one younger brother. When he was born a lot of the abuse that went on in their household got transferred to him. Oscar was glad, because it made it easier for him to protect Morris. He’s warned Morris never to so much as look at or talk to their younger brother.

\- Weasel isn’t really their uncle. They started working for him really young, and Weasel trained them to think of him as family so that they’d always be obedient to him. The three of them get along well enough, and Weasel occasionally will do something really kind for them, but mostly he tries to keep things so that the brothers are doing most of the work, and feel grateful for it.

\- Oscar ended up in adult prison for a while after Newsies. Without Oscar, Morris is pretty harmless. He found religion for a while (because he was on his own and needed to find -something-). When Oscar got out of prison it was more of the same, though, only with Morris feeling like he had to protect Oscar more, and with some of the things Oscar led them into doing being worse than what they’d done previously.


	19. Denton

1\. He’s pretty well off and always has been. His family has enough money that he could not work and remain fairly comfortable. Even so, he mostly lives within his reporter’s salary, and only brings out the extra cash when certain wheels need to be greased. 

2\. He’s had the immense luxury of being able to do what he’s wanted to in life. He’s had a lot of really good chances within the newspaper business because he’s able to concentrate on writing what he wants and what he thinks is important, instead of pandering to the public and choosing what to write on based on how well it will sell. 

3\. He has a high sense of his own self-worth. He thinks he’s good looking, intelligent, and a top-notch writer. Also, he’s going to change the world for the better.

4\. A lot of other people think he’s nuisance. He knows that, and sees it as sort of a badge of honor, and a sign that he’s doing well. 

5\. That said, a lot of people also don’t take him very seriously, and that gets on his nerves.

6\. The newsies deciding he was the best reporter ever and crowning him the “King of New York” was one of the best moments of his career. It might not have been as illustrious and charging up hills with Teddy Roosevelt, but to him it was every bit as important.

7\. David reminds him of himself. 

8\. During the course of the show he goes from thinking Jack is all bluster and noise and none too intelligent, to having a genuine respect and admiration for him.


	20. Dutchy

Dutchy was born to a merchant family in Holland. He was the youngest of three sons.

\- He speaks Dutch fluently, but he was also nearly fluent in German as a kid, and knew a smattering of French and even a few words in Italian. This was because his family had visitors from around Europe, and because his dad took him traveling with him sometimes.

\- What he did not know was how to read properly. There were several reasons for this. One of them was that he was severely dyslexic, but nobody in his family knew what that was or how to deal with it. Another was that he had undiagnosed vision problems, so the letters were always blurry anyway. A third was that his parents got really angry with him for his reading problems, and it wasn’t strange for him to leave his “lessons” with a black eye or a split lip. He was called the family idiot, and he hated it. Sometimes he wished his entire family would die and leave him alone.

\- His family was kind of verging on not poor. They didn’t really have anything in the way of savings, but their clothes were nice, and they got good food and little luxuries here and there.

\- Dutchy’s father “befriended” an American man when Dutchy was around ten. This man convinced Dutchy’s family that they would be rich beyond their wildest dreams in America, and for essentially every cent that the family had, arranged boat passage for them.

\- Dutchy’s oldest brother was already an adult at this point. He decided to stay in Holland with his wife. Dutchy’s middle brother told him that the family wasn’t planning on taking him along because he was too stupid. Dutchy tried to run away from home the night before his family was set to leave for America, because for all that he frequently hated his family, he also loved them, and he didn’t think he could take looking into his father’s face and being told he was being cut off from the family officially.

\- Dutchy’s mother searched for him frantically, and found him only just in time. They almost missed the boat, and his mother was prepared to stay behind and get another boat over, somehow, if they didn’t find him. Both Dutchy and his mother were too tearful to even be angry.

\- Conditions on the boat were horrible. They had a cramped cabin below deck that they shared with a dozen other would be immigrants. Dutchy was sick the whole way, and he fared the best out of his family.

\- His mother died of dysentery. She was the first to go, and Dutchy couldn’t even look in her direction. His father died of influenza. Dutchy also got the flu. He was in a feverish haze for well over a week. At one point he woke up. Somebody had put an orange in his hand, but his brother was gone. He heard later that his brother had jumped off the side of the boat. The orange probably didn’t cure his influenza, but Dutchy thinks it did. He has pretty extreme ideas on the healing properties of oranges. He thinks just sniffing one if you’re sick stands a good chance of curing you. He’s also made an effort to forget everything horrible his brother ever did to him, and remember that he probably was the one to give him that orange.

\- By the time Dutchy made it to America he was eleven, but he was so thin and pale that he looked about seven. The only phrase he knew in English was “Good morning”. He knew he was in a foreign country and should speak a foreign language, so he tried to speak German and French to people. He was very scared, and very alone. He wanted to go home.

\- Dutchy met up with a Queens Newsie who spoke German. The kid was older than Dutchy, but not too bad. He struck up a partnership with him for a similar reason to why Jack struck up a partnership with Les. He found Dutchy a place in the lodging house, and helped him get on his feet.

\- Dutchy picked up English readily. He retained some German, but forgot all but the most basic of basic French. His English, however, reached the point of fluency with unusual quickness.

\- He still didn’t learn how to read though.

\- He kind of got the reputation of the dumb foreigner who spent too much money on oranges because he had approximately the common sense of an orangutan.

\- Dutchy had (and by the time we meet him in Newsies, still has) horrible nightmares.

\- He spent three years saving money for passage on a ship back to Holland. He finally made the money and bought the ticket. The kids at his lodging house knew how badly he wanted to go home, and what a big deal it was for him. They even pooled their money and bought him a sack with five oranges and a tiny bottle of whiskey as a goodbye gift.

\- He got cold feet and couldn’t get on the boat. He sat at the dock and cried so hard that he couldn’t breathe. Dutchy would give nearly anything to go home, but boats scare him so much and he can’t do it. He wonders a lot about his brother back in Holland.

\- Dutchy felt like he couldn’t return to the Queens lodging house after they’d given him a goodbye gift and everything, so he moved to Manhattan.

\- Dutchy was like fourteen by now. Somebody from Children’s Aid came and did a vision test. Dutch found the concept of a test really upsetting, and needed to be coaxed into it ( he also learned that he could trust the Manhattan boys when, after he got upset about the idea of people watching him, Mush, Crutchy, and Blink cleared everybody out of the room so he could take it in private.). Anyway, he and Specs got glasses on the same day, and formed an instant bond over it. Which is to say that yes, they did come to the conclusion that since they both had glasses they were officially best friends forever.

\- Dutchy was really quiet, because he wanted not to be labelled as the stupid one for once in his life. He tried to go under the radar and just be thought of as normal. He did eventually confide his illiteracy in Specs, because that’s what best friends do. Specs tried to teach him to read, but just the act of doing that was almost panic inducing for Dutchy, so Specs gave up just about as soon as he started.

\- Specs covers for Dutchy like nobody’s business. He has most of the lodging house convinced that Dutchy is a genius, and a few of the little ones convinced he’s an astrophysicist in his home country. They don’t know what an astrophysicist is, but it sounds fancy.

\- Dutchy also got to be close friends with Bumlets. They both liked to dance. Bumlets keeps himself purposely a little separated from the other Duane Street boys, but he’s brought Dutchy home to meet his family, and out with him to some of the places he frequents. For Bumlets the most shocking thing about Dutchy was the way he picked up language. After a night with Bumlets’ family Dutchy had a list of about twenty Spanish words that he could pronounce perfectly and wanted to know the meaning of. He remembered them later on, too. It left Bumlets wondering what kind of super-human intelligence it was Dutchy possessed. Dutchy was confused and told Bumlets that both his older brothers had been better at French than him.

\- Itey and Dutchy made friends less than two weeks before the Newsies strike. Itey also came over on a ship with family members, was also the only survivor of they journey, also came to America not knowing English, also had to deal with being looked at as the funny foreigner, and was also only marginally more afraid of boat journeys than he was homesick. They discovered all of this about each other on a drunken night that involved holding hands, crying, cheek kisses, and a pledge of eternal brotherhood. They told each other everything about everything in the span of three hours.

\- Snitch doesn’t approve of drinking, or tearful heart to hearts with *his* best friend. He felt justified in exposing Dutchy’s illiteracy to the rest of the boys.

\- Blink, who is the cause of about half the fist fights at the lodging house (and certainly the only person who has ever engaged in one with *Crutchy*), was the one to break the fight that ensued between Dutchy and Snitch up.

\- Jack, who was newish there at the time, made a rousing speech about how anybody who would make fun of a kid for not knowing how to read wasn’t worth pig farts. He’s not really sure what led him to do it. It was mostly an inspiration of the moment type thing, paired with the fight that had just almost happened getting him overexcited. It was pretty damn inspiring, though, and there wasn’t a kid in the place who wasn’t on Dutchy’s side. Dutchy might have cried. Bumlets might have piped up about how Dutchy was a damn good linguist and an excellent dancer. Specs might have given an equally excellent speech about Dutchy’s discoveries in the field of astrophysics. Dutchy might have then been unanimously elected as the president of the lodging house literacy society. Snitch definitely apologized. He would have apologized even if all this hadn’t happened, because Snitch isn’t actually mean spirited. That said, Snitch didn’t gain any friends from this particular episode in lodging house history (Jake and Pie Eater tried to use it against him later, and Dutchy is the one who told them to let it be).

\- Lots of attention, even positive attention, makes Dutchy shy. He tried to stay under the radar again after that, and mostly succeeded. The experience did give him courage and confidence though. Being able to put effort into learning how to spell the word “strike” and ask Kloppman for help in that endeavor was monumental for Dutchy. Dutchy might have had only one line in the Newsies film, but it consisted of some of the most significant words he said in his entire life.


	21. Jack Kelly ( 1992 movie )

Jack is about as Irish as they come. He was, as we all know, born Francis Sullivan. He was named after his father, who called him Frankie or Frank. His father had lived in America most of his life, and his mother was a more recent immigrant.

His mother’s maiden name was Kelly. (Mary Louise Kelly)  
His mother was good at singing and story telling. She was seventeen when she had him, but she was one of those young girls who looked and carried herself like she was older (most people assumed she was a strapping lass of 23 or so.). Jack himself didn’t learn how old his mother had been when she had him until he was a teenager himself.   
Jack’s mother loved cowboy stories. The Wild West was what she’d imagined when coming to America, and she’d been rather surprised to land on Ellis Island and not be greeted by a single cowboy.

Jack’s father was the kind of person who could charm the moon out of the sky, but there was very little real affection behind it. He was very charismatic, and good at making people do what he wanted them to. Even though he was often rough looking and unwashed, he had a string of girls like you wouldn’t believe.

Jack’s father married his mother because some of the guys he hung around with made a bet that he couldn’t get her to agree to it. Jack’s mother was always purposefully sharp and reserved around men, and it was hard for most of them to get anywhere with her.

Both of Jack’s parents wanted to have a son. Jack’s dad wanted a legitimate child who could carry his name, and his mom just wanted a baby.

Jack’s father was awful to his mother, though, and to Jack as well. His mom started calling her son Jack Kelly because she hated her husband and wanted nothing to do with him or his name. Jack had been her brother’s name.

Jack and his mother got on well. His dad wasn’t usually around, and when he was it was explosive. Jack witnessed things between the two of them that he never should have seen.

Jack’s mother was big on imaginary games. She had Jack pretending to be everything from the president to, to a seagull, to a ballerina, to a table, to a shoelace at various points in his young life. Cowboys was one of the games they played, but it was far from being the only one.

Jack’s mother got pregnant again when Jack was about seven. She had a miscarriage that turned to blood poisoning, and that was the end of her. Jack had sharp memories of his mom talking about his new little brother or sister, and then she just wasn’t there anymore, and the baby never came either.

Jack’s father was not somebody who would tolerate tears or whining. Jack learned very quickly not to cry, or to complain. He kept the house for a while, with his dad stopping by periodically to check in, but leaving Jack to his own devices as to how to feed and care for himself.   
Jack’s father was involved in smuggling embargoed goods into the United States, and occasionally smuggling in would-be immigrants as well. He was more the muscle behind the operation than the brains, which isn’t to say he wasn’t smart. He was smart enough, but low class, and his lack of scruples or strong ambition made him a good hired goon.

Jack eventually came to know his father’s haunts - where he slept sometimes, where he drank, who he kept company with, and took it upon himself to check in with him periodically. There was period of time, approximately between Jack’s tenth and fifteenth year, where he would seek out his dad a lot, and he called himself little Frank (his father being Big Frank). Hid dad could be mean and unpredictable, but sometimes Jack felt like his father liked him and was proud of him too. He occasionally did the odd job for his father, mostly delivering messages and things. Sometimes he’d get something in return for it, in food or affection, but not always. A couple of times he got whiskey or rum in return for it (which he didn’t actually like. But pretended to. It made him feel sick.)

Medda wasn’t much of a friend of Jack’s fathers. Jack’s dad met her backstage once or twice, and Jack talked to her once, but he took a liking to both her and her show, and he kept showing up until she started to know him. She originally assumed Jack was a Newsie, because quite a lot of Newsies went to see her shows, and she really didn’t remember his father as being anything significant. Medda was the one who noticed Jack wasn’t eating very well, or really being taken care of, and suggested he try his hand at selling newspapers. Jack wasn’t quite eleven when he became a Newsie. Medda paid for his first round of papes, which made him instantly popular and interesting to the other boys.

And Jack wasn’t quite twelve when His father sold their house. Jack alternated between staying with his father and his friend Larry, sleeping on the streets, and staying at one of the lodging houses in Manhattan (not Duane Street).  
Jack kind of alternated between selling newspapers (which he was quite good at), and wandering around the city doing whatever his father wanted him to do. He wanted his father to be proud of him, so he would greatly exaggerate the number of newspapers he sold, which led to his father demanding some of the profits, if he was making that much money peddling papes. That, in turn, led to Jack devising increasingly creative (and blatantly dishonest… I mean Truth Improving… ways of upping his sales.).

He met and grudgingly befriended Spot somehow during this time.

The first girl Jack ever slept with was paid for by his father. It wasn’t really a good experience. He felt like he was being made fun of (by his father, not the girl), and had a lot of mixed feelings about the whole encounter.

Jack was fifteen the first time he got put in the Refuge. He was picked up for vagrancy, because he’d been sleeping on the streets that night, and some cop had been bored. He was only in there for about a week, and when he got out he discovered that his father had been sent to prison for killing a man.

Jack wanted to believe that the man had been the policeman who had picked him up and refused to listen to him when he’d said that he wasn’t homeless and he did have folks. It didn’t take Jack long, however, to find out that the man had just been somebody related to his father’s business.

Jack’s first week in the Refuge was bad, but nothing compared to his later stint there. He came out a little hungrier, a little wilder, and a little more afraid, but Snyder hadn’t yet taken over the place at that point, so it wasn’t quite as awful.

The second time Jack got thrown into the Refuge was what broke him. He’d been trying to steal a cart (yes a cart) of donuts, because the boys he lived with at the lodging house had dared him to, and nobody had seemed to be watching. He got caught very quickly, and tried to pass it off as a prank, but the cart owner was having none of it.

This time around, Jack’s sentence was much longer, and Snyder was there. Things that had been part of the deal, like food and a rule book that was sort of followed by the guards, weren’t there anymore. There were more kids as well, and less of them seemed to find their way out.   
Jack’s first major offense within the Refuge was leading the other kids there to demand the food they weren’t getting. Jack, like his father, was just about too charismatic for his own good, without even trying to be. He was quickly identified as potentially dangerous by Snyder, and treated especially badly because of it. He spent more time in solitary than out of it. He once went six days with just a small pitcher of water, in a tiny room, without so much as whisper of human contact. He once had to watch a boy get beaten bloody because Jack had befriended him. Jack alternated between shutting down and retreating into himself, and violent escape attempts. If there hadn’t been bars on the window of solitary, Jack would not have hesitated to try jumping out.

The escape attempts didn’t do anything to shorten his official sentence, but official sentences weren’t so official anymore anyway.

Playing imaginary games was part of Jack’s coping method. Sometimes he was a fly on the wall. Sometimes he was a cup. Sometimes he was Snyder, even. He was able to believe these things really vividly. A cowboy is what he settled on, though, because unlike flies and cups and wardens, being a cowboy made him feel righteous, powerful, and good.

Jack also started thinking about and missing his mother a lot more when he was in prison. He started to realize that she was the only one who had really loved him and had his best interests at heart. He’d tried so long not to think of her, that the version of her that he started thinking about in the Refuge was sort of a sainted, perfected version.

Jack’s time in the Refuge was also when he started to imagine his mom lived out west. He wasn’t very specific on the Santa Fe bit yet, but the out west idea was firm in his mind. He knew it wasn’t real, but sometimes he could imagine hard enough to make himself forget, and he relished those times.

We all know how Jack got out of the Refuge. It was not the most bizarre or extreme escape method he tried.

Jack started going by Jack Kelly officially after his escape. He considered Francis Sullivan dead, and wanted nothing to do with him.

Jack’s escape wasn’t really that long before the Newsies film starts. He knew he was now a fugitive who needed to stay under the radar, but he was frankly horrible at it. He didn’t even try to move to another district of New York, though he did go to another lodging house (Duane Street! The cool one we all know and love!). He knew that he had to get away, but he didn’t know how or to where.

Jack at this point had a lot of triggers that could send him into flight or fight mode pretty much. The police. Closed spaces. Being shouted at of he wasn’t expecting it. He was good at hiding it, though, and he put on such a brave face that nearly everybody believed him.

He also started reading voraciously at this point. He’d gotten really bad at being alone with his thoughts, at least without some kind of weapon against them, incase they stopped being of the daydreamy variety and started to go into bad places. Books became Jack’s weapon and escape. Particularly penny westerns. He started to style himself more and more off of the heroes in those westerns, even dressing like them, and trying to be brave like them. As far as anybody at the Duane Street Lodging house was concerned, it worked. Having a friend who styled himself as Wild West cowboy added some fun to their lives. Jack could have styled himself as a Martian, and they would have enjoyed it.

Jack started to always keep at least one book on him.

People at the Duane Street lodging house who Jack formed connection with most quickly were Racetrack, Crutchy and Blink (also Snipeshooter and Boots among the younger kids.).

Blink had also been in the Refuge. His time and Jack’s time had barely overlapped, but that was something they could understand about each other at least ( and @jackkellystories gets credit for that one.).

Blink and Jack also had a sort of friends with benefits relationship down at Duane Street, which petered off after Jack met David. (Also @jackkellystories)

Jack started to be somebody who the boys at the lodging house would listen to very quickly, and it scared him a little. He fell naturally into leadership positions, but always felt somewhat at a loss when it happened. He needed to get away a lot.

Jack also didn’t feel as close to the others boys as they did to him. They were just acquaintances. It was hard for him to feel grounded in anything or anybody. Blink and Race came the closest to understanding that about him.

Sleeping in a place where the door was closed didn’t appeal to him much, so Jack was known for wandering a lot at night. He was a terrible sleeper.

Jack’s specifics desires in life, both for a family and to get away, reached a peak and became more specific during his time at Duane Street before the strike. “Away” turned into “Santa Fe”. His phantom family began to take form in his mind, from bits of books he’d read, and from idealized memories of his mother, and the sibling he could have had.  
Jack felt in over his head the whole strike. It was a mixture of David and false bravado that got him through it.

In spite of all the awful things Jack went through in his life, he retained a deep interest in people, and a willingness to both believe in others and help them learn to believe in themselves.

Javid

Also Jack is Bi.


	22. Jack Kelly ( Broadway )

-Jacks parents were both Irish as hell. They were also very much in love. They had a tiny apartment, and when Jack was very little, his mother would paint on the walls sometimes. She liked drawing as well, though she didn’t think she had any talent.

\- Jack’s father worked in the factories, on the railroads, and wherever he could make a dime. What he did was real backbreaking labour, the kind of thing which made him too tired to play with his son at the end of the day, even though he loved him.

\- Jack’s mother eventually got work at a textiles factory. Jack was about four at the time. She would bring Jack along to work, because there was nobody else to watch them. Jack has memories of seeing the machines at the factory as big, scary monsters with gaping mouths, who would swallow his mother up.

\- Jack’s mother usually gave him sketch pads and pencils to keep him occupied.

\- When Jack was six his mother became pregnant with a second child. He was more used to seeing the machines at this point, but they looked even more monstrous next to this tiny woman with a stomach that grew bigger and bigger, carrying a new brother or sister for Jack.

\- They couldn’t afford sketch pads anymore. Jack’s mother let him draw on the walls of their apartment, with pencils that had been sharpened so many times that there was barely any pencil left. When Jack’s father complained that art wasn’t the right way for a young boy to be passing his days, Jack’s mother reminded him that her back hurt so much she could barely stand at the end of the day, and that letting Jack draw kept him happy, and kept him from running around the house like a tornado.

\- At work Jack’s mother gave him a children’s reading primer to look at, and told him to learn his letters. He did his best.

\- His mother miscarried the baby at work, and ended up in a ball of the floor crying, in a pool of her own blood. This is one of Jack’s most vivid childhood memories.

\- Jack’s mother died two days later from blood poisoning related to the miscarriage. Jack was in the room with her when it happened. Jack’s father was as well, but he ran out, and Jack was left alone with the body for several hours.

\- Jack’s father actively discouraged Jack from drawing or artwork. He meant well. He told Jack that theirs was a family of workers, and he would be the same, and needed to get used to it, the quicker the better. Jack asked when he would get to be happy, and his father said when he found a woman who loved him, and had a son of his own, those things would make him happy. He assured Jack that he was the biggest source of happiness in his life, and he loved seeing him become taller and more manly. He liked seeing Jack play with the other neighbourhood children, and knowing he could run faster than any one of them. Encouraging Jack to be a dreamer is something he never did, however.

\- For lack of anything else to do with him, Jack’s dad sent Jack into work in the factory spot that his mother had just vacated. The machines scared Jack more than ever now. He started to pretend that they were dragons, and he was taming them and forcing them to do his bidding. He never told anybody this.

\- The jobs that Jack’s father did seemed to suck the life out of him. He looked old, even though he really wasn’t. One day, he just didn’t come home. Eventually one of Jack’s father’s friends came for Jack, and was like, “I’m sorry, he couldn’t do it anymore.” He gave Jack a nickel, and brought him to live at the newsboys’ lodging house.

\- Jack was about ten when he became a Newsie. It took him time to discover his skill at it, but being very young was a selling point in and of itself. Some of the older boys helped him get on his feet, and taught him the trade.

\- Jack had a lot of trouble sleeping. He had nightmares about his mother, about machines, about being abandoned. One of the older kids told him that that was normal, but that he needed to find something to occupy himself with, because nobody was going to put up with a snively little kid who couldn’t make it on his own. Jack bought himself a sketch book. He felt a little guilty about it initially, as though he was defying his father, but it kept his hands from shaking, and let him relax. He never thought of his scribbles as being very good.

\- Jack was about fourteen when he met Medda. By this time, he was already really good at selling papers. She was doing a show about the Wild West, and he went to see it about eight times. On the last night of that particular show, an hour after all the other audience had made their way out, Medda caught Jack standing as close to the stage as audience was allowed to get, trying to sketch the backdrop as quickly as he could. He jumped when he saw her, but Medda asked to see his sketches, and he handed them over. A lot of the pictures were of her and her show, and she was quite impressed. She told Jack she hoped he’d keep coming to her shows, and let her see his art from time to time.

\- Eventually Medda started letting Jack go backstage to mess with paints, which escalated into her paying him to make backdrops for her sometimes. She was the one who encouraged his art most, even when he tried to insist it was silly or just a hobby. She would say things to him like, “trust me kid, I didn’t get where I was today by being sensible.”, or “There’s more than one kind of hard work. You’ve got the talent. Choose the kind that won’t kill you before you’re twenty.”

\- Even though Jack drew a lot of things for Medda, it was still that one Wild West backdrop that most captured his imagination, and he frequently painted variations on that. He started to read cowboy books, and anything about the west that he could get his hands on.

\- Jack was fifteen when he met Crutchie. Crutchie was thirteen and sickly, and Jack thought having a kid with a crutch selling with him might up his own sales. They got along amazingly, though. Crutchie was funnier and more independent than Jack had assumed he would be. He was hopeful, and saw good things in people. He and Jack hit it off more quickly than Jack had ever hit it off with anybody.

\- Jack also started to experiment with girls around this time. Mostly they were around his age or a bit older, similarly unattached as far as family went, and knew what they were doing and how to avoid getting into trouble. They gave Jack an education in that area as well. The last thing he wanted to do was get a girl pregnant. None of these were serious relationships.

\- By sixteen, Jack was known as being one of the best Newsies there was. People liked him. He was one of the older boys at the lodging house by this point, so he fell into the habit of looking out for everybody.

\- One day a much younger kid stole an apple from a cart, and the cart owner came after him with a knife. Jack stopped the owner, claiming it was him and not the little boy who had stolen the fruit. He’d done things like this before, and gotten away with it. He would have gotten away with it this time, if he hadn’t, as he was walking away with his friends, done a buffoonish impression of the cart owner running around with the knife. Jack was arrested for stealing the apple almost before he knew what had hit him.

\- The Refuge was the worst thing that ever happened to Jack.

-The first thing they did to Jack was make him confess his crimes. They beat him so badly that he was confessing to all kinds of things he’d never done just to try and make them stop, and by the end of it he half believed that he had done those things.

\- Jack should have stayed under the radar at this point, but he couldn’t. He hated seeing people mistreated, especially people who couldn’t take care of themselves. He yelled at Snyder for not feeding the kids there. He’d met a boy who hadn’t gotten anything to eat since he first arrived. When food came, it all came at once, and the boys had to fight out who would get what, which left the weaker ones with next to nothing, and Jack tried to change that.

\- Jack spent more time in solitary than not. He grew wild there. He didn’t want to just get away from prison, but from the entire city.

\- He’d had the idea of Santa Fe in his mind for a long time, but in the Refuge was where it really crystallised. He made plans. Between escape attempts (and there were many), Jack would escape into the most detailed fantasy life that anybody ever had, and all of it cantered around Santa Fe.

\- Snyder hated Jack’s mental escape more even than his physical attempts to break out. He did everything in his power to make Jack feel hopeless and worthless.

\- Jack was a mess by the time he stowed away on Teddy Roosevelt’s carriage and got out. 

\- And in the least clever post-escape plan ever, Jack went right back to the same lodging house he’d been living at before. He wasn’t exactly thinking things through carefully. He was a scared seventeen year old kid, who needed a place to go.

\- It actually worked in his favour, because the police assumed he’d know better, and that he was trying to hide out some place far away. They checked the Duane Street Lodging House, but not as carefully as they did other places. Besides, Jack had remembered to sign into the lodging house using his alias, John K. Elli, and nobody could break such an ingenious disguise.

\- Things resumed their normal rhythm. Sort of. Jack couldn’t deal with closed spaces anymore, and started sleeping on the roof and calling it his “pent house”, to mask the fact that he just couldn’t deal with being indoors for long. Crutchie joined him, and they spent more time talking than sleeping, mostly about Jack’s obsession with escaping to Santa Fe.

\- The other boys, who had always looked up to Jack, started to admire him more as well. His prison escape and decision to stay at the lodging house after made him seem brave and powerful to the group. He started acting cockier and more proud, to hide the part of him that was sort of a mess still. He remained kind and dependable, and seeing that others saw him as somebody they could turn to, he worked really hard to take care of them and be what they needed him to be.

\- Crutchie understood more of Jack’s cracks and problems than the other boys did, and was very much his confidant. I can’t overstate how valuable and necessary Crutchie was to Jack.

\- As far as romance goes, Jack’s father’s belief that a nice wife and some backbreaking labour is what Jack would get out of life, made Jack rather cautious about the whole thing. After the Refuge he was even more so. He still flirted like mad (and he totally knew that he was good looking), but he felt tainted as well.

\- Jack is bi, but pre-strike the only thing he’d ever done with a boy was drunkenly kiss Specs one time.

\- Then the strike happened, and we know that part of the story.


	23. Jake (1992)

\- Jake is his Newsies name. His given name is Emile.

\- He thinks of himself as the absolute height of fashion with that snazzy bowler cap of his.

\- That’s why his Newsies name is Jake. Racetrack thought he was being arrogant about the whole hat thing, and started acting like he couldn’t remember his name, and calling him something different every time he met him, to show that he was too insignificant to even be remembered. This caught on with the other Newsies, and somehow they settled on the name Jake for him.

\- Mush thought this was kind of mean, so he always calls him either Emile or Bowler, and makes a point of complimenting him on his hat. Jake doesn’t appreciate this nearly enough.

\- Jake has a slightly older sister who works in a tavern. Her name is Ethel. She looks a lot like him. She’s very robust and friendly. A lot of the boys know her. Sarah Jacobs knows her as well, in a friend of a friend kind of way. Ethel is the kind of person who will talk your ear off.

\- Ethel took care of him a lot after they lost their mother to cancer, when Jake was about fourteen. Jake misses his mom a lot. His mom, his sister, and him always led a fairly simple life, but it was nice, and they loved each other.

\- Jake is kind of quiet and awkward. He’s only been with the Newsies for a year, and doesn’t feel that strong of a kinship with them. He wants to save up money and start up a small inn/tavern in Maine with his sister.

\- He has a sweetheart who he thinks he will probably marry. She’s Danish and works in a sweatshop. She and Jake have both learned scraps of language to communicate with each other.

\- He still owns his baby blanket. He plans on giving it to his kid someday.

\- He wants to make something of himself, and be the kind of person his mother would be proud of.


	24. Jake 2

*What does their bedroom look like?*  
At the lodging house, it’s just a bunk of course, but he has a few things his mother gave him hiding under the bed. One of them is his baby blanket, which he feels too old for when he first enters the lodging house at sixteen, but that he also wants desperately, because it’s an artifact of a time when he had parents. It never comes out, until he gets his own place eventually, then it sits on the edge of his bed. His grown up apartment is pretty sparse, but he has a few plants, and a cracked vase that he saw at a junk shop and took a fancy to.

*Do they have any daily rituals?*  
He has a sister, Ethel, who works at a bar about half an hour’s walk away from the lodging house. She’s got the kind of work where she has to stay up all night and sleep all day. He brings her the morning paper at the beginning of her shift, and they talk a little.

*Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?*  
He’s a Newsie. He walks around all day, and carries papers. He hasn’t been a Newsie for that long, though, and his mom was sick for a long time before he lost her, so he got used to sitting around the house a lot with her.

*What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?*  
Everywhere is busy. That’s part of living in New York. He’d come in and make it busier,

*Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)*  
He doesn’t have a lot, so he tries to keep it neat. That includes himself. Dusting, however, mystifies him a little. Where does dust come from? Why does it settle on countertops? What does it make him sneeze? What is dust?

*Eating habits and sample daily menu*  
He loves sweets. Loves them. He’s the kind of person who will forgo lunch and dinner, in order to afford a but of cake. He was forbidden from eating them much when his mom was alive, and telling himself that he can do and eat what he wants is one of his ways of consoling himself after.

*Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time*  
He’s a fan of stickball, but only if he has a chance at winning.

*Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging*  
Sitting is an indulgence that newsies can’t always afford during the workday, and it takes him a while to get used to that,

*Makeup?*  
According to Medda, he has an interesting face. He got paid five dollars to play Cupid in one of her productions once. He didn’t look half bad in lipstick and rouge, but he was one of the worst, most inexpressive actors to ever face the audience of Irving Hall. The only time he showed any real emotion was when they tried to hoist him up into the air on a rope to fly across the stage, and even then the emotion was sheer terror. The newsies enjoyed the performance. The rest of the gentle audience learned some fresh and colorful expletives.

*Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?*  
Jake’s mother was very sick for a very long time before she died and she went to live at the lodging house. He and his sister did everything for her, and he was in the habit of waking up several times during the night to make sure that she was okay, that she wasn’t in pain, and that she had what she needed. When he arrives in the lodging house, he still wakes up several times during the night, with an overwhelming feeling that he needs to get her water, or medicine, or change the sheets, only of course she isn’t there.

 

*Intellectual pursuits?*  
Nope. No time. He has work to do. Intellectual pursuits are a luxury.

 

*Favorite book genre?*  
Crappy dime novels.

 

*Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?*  
He hasn’t put much thought into it. His sister thinks he’ll. find a nice girl and get married. He hopes whoever it is likes stickball, taking in vaudeville shows, and cooking.

 

*Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)*.   
He’s allergic to citrus. It won’t kill him, but it makes his throat itch.

 

*Biggest and smallest short term goal?*  
He is still looking to find his angle as a Newsie, so that’s a big deal to him. He’d also like to make more friends. His sister has a super active social life, and he sometimes feels like he needs to keep up by making some friends of his own. 

Biggest and smallest long term goal?  
He’d like to save up enough money so that he has options in his life, beyond starving or working his ass off and maybe not starving. Eventually he’d like to get out of New York, and maybe go up north.

*Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress*  
He thinks he’s a pretty snappy dresser. He has more clothes than a lot of the other boys, because his sister keeps buying them for him. The other guys tease him about his bowler hat, but he really likes it, and he doesn’t think it makes him look like a dandy. He also likes overalls.

*Favorite beverage?*  
Coffee with milk, no sugar.

*What do they think about before falling asleep at night?*  
He finds it hard to fall asleep sometimes. He counts sheep in the most determined way ever.

*Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?*  
Luckily he was always very healthy. Little aches and pains and coughs worry him when they come, because that’s how big illnesses start.

*Turn-ons? Turn-offs?*  
He likes dancing, stability, and lipstick.

*Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?*  
Probably nothing. Or a picture of a cloud.

*How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?*  
He knows where he keeps his stuff.

*Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?*  
He isn’t bad at math.

*How do they see themselves 5 years from today?*  
Married, and maybe in a cabin in the woods somewhere, with a family, and a few exciting stories to tell about his youth.

*Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?*  
He realizes that he isn’t free to do what he wants, and neither is his sister, because they are poor, and missing a couple days of work could break them. He doesn’t want a ton of money, just enough to open some doors. He’s determined to survive and find some happiness.

*What is their biggest regret?*  
He believes that if he’d been able to afford to get his mom out into the countryside somewhere, with clean air and trees, then she would have survived. The family couldn’t afford that of course, so he regrets nearly every penny he ever spent in his life up until that point.

 

*Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?*  
His sister Ethel is very important to him. He’d like to better friends with the newsies. Mush seems especially friendly, and like a solid companion. His worst enemy are those rotten Delancey brothers, who he got into a fight with on his first day selling.

*Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)*  
Try to stop the fire.

*Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)*  
That’s already happened. Ethel made the arrangements, and he did as he was told.

*Most prized possession?*  
He has a handful of things that belonged to his mom.

*Thoughts on material possessions in general?*  
The ones with sentimental value are worth holding on to.

*Concept of home and family?*  
People who love and take care of one another.

*Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)*  
He likes company, but he doesn’t like talking a lot, or having everybody up in his business.

 

*What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?*  
Marbles, cards, stickball

*What makes them feel guilty?*  
A lot of the newsies have had it a lot worse than him, and it’s a shame.

*Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?*  
Analytical

*What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?*  
Telling his sister everything that is going on with him.

*Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?*  
Neither really. He has a fairly realistic view of himself.

*How misanthropic are they?*  
Not very. He’s an amiable guy. He likes company. He’s not good at striking up conversations with people, and finds it a lot easier if they start things up, but he wouldn’t say no to any potential companionship.

*Hobbies?*  
Stickball.

*How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?*  
He went to school for a little while when he was little, just long enough to learn the basics. He thought that it was fun, but he’d rather not go back. Too regimented.

 

*Religion?*  
Christian.

*Superstitions or views on the occult?*  
He doesn’t like the idea of ghosts, and wishes the other boys would stop harping on it.

*Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?*  
Deeds

*If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal*  
Somebody nice, with curly hair, who was fun and funny.

*How do they express love?*  
Small gifts

*If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?*  
Determined. Jake can throw a few punches if need be, but he’d rather fight in a group than on his own.

*Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?*  
He’s afraid of getting sick, and not being able to take care of himself..


	25. Jacobs family

\- Mayer is second generation American, and came over to the U.S. in his mother’s belly. David and Sarah (at the time of the film) have a living grandmother who doesn’t speak terribly good English, and is an insatiable busybody. They also have fond memories of their grandfather, who passed away when David was nine and Sarah ten. 

\- Esther is first generation, and came over when she was a young teenager. Possibly Polish? She came from a big family, but doesn’t have any means of getting in touch with them now. She never knew her father, and her mother was strict, distant, and prone to scolding, and tended to show affection and approval through food and gifts of material comforts (scarce though they were). She had seven sisters (all older), and one older brother who she was very close too. 

\- Esther’s brother was supposed to go with her to America. It was his idea, and he planned the whole thing, and arranged for their passage. He got cold feet at the last moment, however, and refused to get on the ship. Esther refused to giver up on the idea and struck out without him. The last conversation Esther and her brother ever had was a shouting argument about whether or not she would go. She wonders about him a lot. 

\- Mayer went to a crowded tenement school until fourth grade. He was a talented student, and stood out and progressed quickly despite large crowds and poor conditions. When he finally had to drop out to work in the factory and contribute to the family income, one of his teachers came to speak to his father on his behalf to try and convince him to let Mayer continue his studies. This gained him another three months of schooling, but suspecting that even with schooling the possibilities for his son would be bleak, Mayer’s father regretfully unenrolled him. 

\- Mayer was the ultimate idealist. Even after leaving school, he read constantly, and attended any kind of lecture or free educational event he could find. He became especially interested in books on government and philosophy, and obsessed with the idea of socialism, which he saw as a governmental system that would solve all of his problems, not to mention everybody else’s. His belief in it was nearly religious in its fervor. 

\- Esther was very concerned with appearances, but not out of vanity. She knew that looking and behaving in a certain way could help her succeed and blend in. She was very good at making the most out of what she had. She was the type who could look like she was wearing the latest fashions while spending very little money. 

\- Both adopted the accents that they have somewhat consciously. Esther made a great deal of effort to try to speak English with the same intonations as those around her in order to blend in and assimilate. Mayer tried to talk like somebody who was educated. 

\- Esther would have a way of seeming very conventional and quiet, and making people forget that she had at one point been a girl who had stepped on a boat on her own, to sail away to an uncertain future in a land she’d never seen before. 

\- Esther was very young when she had Sarah. 18 or 19. 

\- Esther and Mayer are both social climbers, but for different reasons. Esther wants her children to be happy and well cared for and have everything they need. Mayer wants his children to make a new world for their children’s children, and wants to give them the tools to do so. 

\- David is more similar to Esther than Mayer, but he’s more likely to go to his father for advice or with problems, and he tries to emulate him more. David admires his father greatly, but also thinks that he’s deluded sometimes. He’s the most educated person in his family (as far as schooling goes), and knowing that he knows a bunch of things that his parents don’t is troubling for him sometimes. A lot of the things he’s aware of that they aren’t fall under the category of useless trivia, but he’s not always good at recognizing that. 

\- Sarah works in the same factory as her mother, and as a result they are quite close. She knows a lot more about Esther’s past and her way of viewing the world than David does. In terms of personality and ideologies, however, Sarah is quite similar to her father.

-Sarah is very good at getting people to like her, sometimes unwittingly. She has her little group of friends, but in her heart she’s somewhat of an introvert, and prefers to be alone with her thoughts or with her family. David would think that she doesn’t have to put any effort into making and keeping friends, but in all truth she often finds the people that she calls friends draining.


	26. Kloppman

\- He’s been running the Duane Street Lodging House since before any of the Newsies we meet in the movie were even born.

\- He used to be more of a stickler for the rules, but also more of the sensitive, bleeding heart, caring type.

\- He’s seen everything and then some.

\- He lets the boys get away with more than most people would, because he feels like they need that. The boys have a lot of issues, so he’s not going to yell at them for not cleaning up under their finger nails in the winter when the water is cold, or for needing to go out for some air past the time when the doors of the lodging house are usually shut. He’ll even wave lodging fees on occasion, when it seems like the boys need it, but he can’t do that too often without causing trouble for himself.

\- The boys get it. They appreciate Kloppman’s leniency, and genuinely try not to take advantage of it. Boys who would take advantage of it are quickly made to understand that that isn’t okay. They regulate themselves in that way. When there is any kind of inspection of the lodging house, the rally themselves together to make the place look good, and like Kloppman has been doing everything in accordance with regulations.

\- Kloppman knows he can’t save these boys. He’s tried sometimes. He’s seen some awful things happen. He’s seen kids with problems that the lodging house couldn’t handle. He’s even seen kids die. He knows that, even as adults, a lot of these kids go on to lead rough lives.

\- Out of the current crop, Blink and Tumbler are both kids that Kloppman has pulled some strings to help. Tumbler was technically too young to stay, but between his relationship with Skittery and a botched adoption, it seemed like the least traumatic outcome for him. Blink was meant to get reunited with his father, but his home situation was wildly abusive. His father wasn’t even looking for him, but children’s aid had figured out who he was, and that he had living family. Anyway, some paperwork got lost.

\- Kloppman is used to the boys not taking things seriously that they should take seriously ( that segment in the movie where Snyder is at the lodging house looking for Jack is a prime example), and then having blowout arguments over marbles or whatever.

\- Kloppman has been taken advantage of before. He’s had grown up newsboys show up, ask for a place to stay for just one evening at the only home they’d ever known, and then try to rob him. He tries to seem harsh enough and unapproachable enough not to let that happen again.

\- But he doesn’t really have it in him. There’s a part of him that still felt proud and damn well near grandfatherly when illiterate Dutchy learned how to spell strike. The same when he sees the ways that the kids can be kind to each other, and take care of each other. That’s one of the reasons he doesn’t send certain kids away. Blink should have been kicked out on the street for fighting ten times over, but Blink is also the kid who carried Snipeshooter home that one time he thought he broke his leg (it was just sprained), and paid for him to stay at the lodging house for three days even though they weren’t close friends. Knowing about things like that means Kloppman could never kick Blink out. That, and Kloppman knows that if he kicked Blink out on the street, Mush would go with him, and Mush doesn’t deserve that.

\- In a way, Kloppman likes the troublemakers more than he does kids like Bumlets, Mush, or Snitch, who never cause a lick of trouble if they can help it. He assumes (unfairly) that the trouble makers are the ones with something going on in their heads.

\- Kloppman plays the confused old man card to his advantage. For example, David technically isn’t allowed in the lodging house, because he doesn’t live there. David walks in whenever he wants. Kloppman calls him Skittery every time. Kloppman knows what he is doing, and finds it hilarious.

\- He’s the one who started calling Bumlets “Bumlets”. He finds this hilarious too.

\- You know who else he calls Bumlets? Sarah Jacobs. And yes, it is him making a cruel joke about how the clean, polite dancer kid is effeminate, and yes that is genuinely pretty awful of him, and yes he does make an inordinate amount of jokes at the expense of Bumlets, and no it isn’t actually funny.

\- that said, he does actually know who everybody is. He keeps track of them, and knows their histories.

\- Jack is a favorite of his. So is Skittery, though you’d never guess it. Racetrack, Swifty and Specs as well.

\- he’s had a few boys there who were honestly mean. They were not favorites. The hard thing there was, usually he knew something about them that was good, or that was painful, and that kept him from dealing with things as strictly as he should have. Particularly when he was younger. At the point we see him in the movie, Kloppman is ten times more likely to turn out a kid who is cruel to others than he was thirty years before.

\- Kloppman’s policies against racism (and related isms) are strict. The first offense will get a boy yelled at, and maybe punished in some way that involves cleaning toilets with toothbrushes (if Kloppman thinks it’s genuinely accidental, just yelled at). The second offense will get a kid kicked out. The boarders at the lodging house are a diverse group, and making sure that they don’t get into fights based on race, and that they realize that everybody has as much right to be there as anybody else, is essential to the whole arrangement. The kids also regulate themselves a lot there. They don’t always know what kinds of comments aren’t okay to make, but somebody will usually set them straight if they cross the wrong lines.

\- Kloppman has a lot of regrets. He doesn’t know if he’s done well enough by his boys, though he’s certainly tried to. He worries about whether he’s accidentally made things worse for some of them. He’s not all that comfortable with the idea of dying, because he fears God’s judgement.

\- He’s a New Yorker, born and bred. He can’t make up his mind as to whether or not the city, and the world at large, is improving, or getting worse.


	27. Medda (1992)

Medda grew up poor, but not destitute. She lived with her mother and father, who worked hard to keep a roof over the family’s head and food on the table. She had two sisters, and an older brother. Her maternal grandparents were from Sweden, and her father was a more recent Dutch immigrant.

 

Her mother was rumored to have been a great beauty at one point, but Medda remembers her as being grey haired, watery-eyed, wan, and tired. She worked cleaning rooms for and looking after the children of much wealthier people. She didn’t have a lot of time at home with her own children, so her parents moved in with them to help take care of the kids.

 

Medda’s grandmother was a tiny woman, who Medda remembers as always smiling and finding pretty things for her to look at. She sang songs, and told Medda the loveliest stories. Medda loved her accent and the sound of her voice. At home Medda’s grandmother was very talkative, but out in public she didn’t speak much, because she felt her English wasn’t good enough. Medda never understood this. She sometimes stood in the mirror trying to copy her grandmother’s voice.

Her grandfather was kind, and Medda liked him. He had rheumatoid arthritis. Medda and her siblings had to take care of him. He’d been a woodcarver when he was younger, and much of the furniture in Medda’s house was made by him, and made beautifully. When the family fell on hard times, they started to sell off the grandfather’s pieces. Medda’s grandmother hated that. She was prone to grand statements like, “Sell that rocking chair? No. You might as well sell the meat off his bones!” and “Don’t you see you’ve given your poor father’s soul to those strangers for a few dollars?”. Even as an adult, Medda couldn’t shake the feeling that selling off a bed frame that her grandfather had made was what killed him.

 

Actually what killed him was a bad case of the flu. Medda and her siblings got it too. Medda’s grandmother wouldn’t allow their parents in the house, lest they caught it. The bed frame was her grandfather’s finest piece, and the only thing that Medda’s grandmother was the one to sell. She did it because the family needed medicine. Medda doesn’t remember the whole thing clearly, and she doesn’t care to. What she knew was that her brother, her baby sister, and her grandfather all lost their lives, that her other sister was never quite well again, and that once her own fever passed she regained her health with a quickness that shocked everybody, and taught her that life was unfair.

 

The family had been putting a lot of money towards the education of Medda’s brother. He was heading towards finishing high school when he passed away. Medda overheard her father bemoaning what he was going to do now with “only a couple of useless girls” to look after, and Medda resolved then and there that she was not going to be useless. She was twelve years old.

 

Medda got her first job at a garment factory. It was a small operation, especially compared to the huge sweatshops that she saw beginning to be erected as she grew older. That didn’t mean that it was pleasant. It was dark and dirty, with no fan and nothing for heat in the winter, and the doors were locked between eight in the morning and six at night. She had to produce a certain amount of garments a day if she wanted to be paid. At one point all of the girls at work got lice, and Medda had to cut her hair short and put turpentine in it.

 

One of the older girls at the factory, Lulia, came from a background of some education, and as soon as Medda realized she knew how to read, she started begging her for lessons. Eventually they worked it out so that if Medda made a quarter of Lulia’s garments for her, Lulia would give her reading lessons after work. As it happened, Lulia ended up giving Medda smoking lessons as well, and tips for corners she could cut to get through her work faster and more easily (“but won’t the clothes fall apart?” “What do you care? You aren’t the one wearing them.”).

 

Not long after Medda cut her hair, her grandmother started taking her to the theatre, insisting that if she lived a life without some small pleasures, that she would end up like her mother. ( “What do you mean, Mormor?” “Old. You will be old.”). Vaudeville was Medda and her grandmother’s little secret. Medda’s grandma also insisted that Medda should save some of the money she made in secret, rather than giving it all to her family.

 

Medda, her sister, and her grandmother became sort of a fixture at the theatre. They went every Thursday night. Sometimes Medda dragged Lulia to see shows during the week. Medda eventually got up the nerve to talk to one of her favorite dancers (Rosie, who had a friendly looking smile, was just a little shorter and heavier than the other girls, and had the most amazing curly red hair). Lulia laughed at Medda and called her star struck. Rosie told Medda about a few other theaters that she worked at sometimes. One of them was basically an upscale brothel. Another performed plays. Medda went to see Antigone five times, even though Rosie was only in it as an understudy. By this point, Medda’s parents were beginning to notice how much time she spent at the theatre, and disapprove. Her grandmother also disapproved, mostly because the amount of money that Medda was spending. She insisted that if Medda loved the stage so much, she needed to do something about it, and not just sit in the audience.

the first time Medda tried out for a job, she blew it. She was too nervous to sing, and didn’t know the dance steps. She was told that she was pretty enough, but not a performer. She started going to auditions every month, both for plays and vaudeville. Her acting was initially kind of ridiculously over the top, and won more laughter than applause, but she worked on it.

 

She was fourteen when she got her first theatre job. It was the week after her grandmother died, and she suspected that it was because she was known at the theatre, and the dancers felt bad for her. She wasn’t on stage. She was in charge of mending broken costumes and things like that, and of selling candy and cigarettes to the mostly male patrons. She was, however, allowed to attend rehearsals, as long as she stayed out of the way, and she managed to learn a lot about both dancing and vocals.

 

She gradually began to learn that flirting with the patrons at the theatre increased her sales and tips. There were some regulars that she liked, and some that she didn’t trust. She got into the habit of lying about where she lived, and that lead to her making up fake lives for herself. When she started adopting her grandmother’s Swedish accent, and pretending that her English wasn’t so good, it was initially as a way to deflect some of the lewder comments she received from theatre goers, simply by pretending that she didn’t understand them. To her surprise, the men loved this act, and her tips nearly doubled over night. She began to do it whenever she was in the theatre. It made her feel like she was acting along with the other girls, and that she was closer to her grandmother.

 

The management at the theatre could be terrible, especially to the girls working there. It broke the magic for Medda. She watched dancers be yelled at and bullied for gaining or losing weight, for bouts of bad skin, or wavering smiles. Some of them had families to support, and were bullied out of things like taking a night off to celebrate their child’s birthday. Some, including Medda at times, were yelled at for not seeking available enough to certain patrons who were looking for more than just a show.

 

That said, Medda was exceptionally good at turning around unwanted flirtation most of the time, just by pretending that she had absolutely no clue what was going on. She played a lot of games with it as well, “accidentally” speaking in double entendres and things like that.

 

She became good friends with Toby, the janitor at the theatre. Toby was 19, and he looked after Medda a lot. In turn, when Medda caught him in the closet of the theatre with a male lover, she never spoke a word of it to anybody.

 

At home, Medda’s family was not happy with her chosen career path. She, in turn, was furious. She was angry that they hardly ever had time for her, other than to disapprove of her now. She was angry that they’d sold all of her grandfather’s beautiful furniture and left her with nothing to remember him by. She was angry that her father had ever worried that she might be a useless mouth to feed, and that they’d rather have her locked up in a miserable factory making ugly clothes until her hands ached. The first time her father hit her, she spent the night at Toby’s, and swore up and down that she didn’t care if she brought shame upon the family. Her father apologized for hurting her, but not for trying to remove her from the theatre. She spent less and less time at home.

 

She and Toby ran away to Boston for a month one time. It turned out to be a bad idea.

Another time, Toby got into a fight, and ended up with a long cut down his left cheek. Medda tried to give him stitches herself. It didn’t go well.

 

Medda continued to give money to her family every month, and to live with Toby. She was ridiculously good at saving money. General opinion of her was that she was flighty, irresponsible, not terribly smart, and living in sin. However, she showed up to work each day, and learned how to negotiate her position with shrewdness and intelligence. She kept careful accounts of all her spending, and learned a little about investments. She read plays and books by the dozen, and formed plans on how she would do something grand and amazing one day.

Medda learned how to do make-up for the dancers and other actresses by observing what the make-up artists did. She rose in rank to the head of the backstage hair and make-up department. She was innovative, and good at fixing broken costumes and set pieces in a pinch. She made less money doing this than she did selling cigarettes to the audience, but she liked it better, because it was more interesting. The actresses liked her, because they’d known her for such a long time, and she was always supportive and full of praise for their performances.

By the time Medda was 17 she could follow all of the dance routines, and had an attractive, low singing voice. The other girls at the theatre weren’t sure why she was still being asked to work backstage rather than on it. When she asked the stage manager, he said it was because he needed to make sure that she wouldn’t cause trouble, but refused to say what she could do to prove herself. A few weeks later, he told her that he’d make her a swing in the performances if she slept with this one particularly wealthy patron. She did, got drunk with Toby after, and started out her first day in her new position with a raging headache (not that she ended up going on that day anyway.). Toby expected her to be more upset than she was. And she was upset, disgusted, and uncomfortable, but she was also going on about how next time something like that happened, she was going to negotiate better terms.

Medda was a popular dancer from the moment she got onstage. Her reputation proceeded her. She’d already created a character for herself to play at the theatre, and it was very effective.

 

Medda wrote her own songs sometimes, completely ridiculous and somewhat raunchy little things, mostly as a joke. She told them to the other girls backstage, and they laughed over them. She started chatting with the patrons more, and shared the songs with them.

By the time Medda was in her early twenties, she was doing very well at the shows. In some ways she lived a wild life, between living with a man she hadn’t married, occasionally taking lovers, wearing make-up, and being at the theatre night and day. In some ways she was very responsible - she never made a purchase without writing it down, for instance. She was an excellent seamstress when she wasn’t rushing through the task, but not very good and keeping up a home. There was always a slight disarray about her rooms, and she had no idea how to turn on her stove, much less use it to cook something. She knew most food delivery people in her part of the city by name, tipped well, and always remembered to ask after their families and their pets.

 

Toby started going through some bad things with one of the guys he spent time with. Mostly in that the guy was older, in a position of power, and threatening Toby with all kinds of exposure if Toby didn’t do what he wanted. In turn, Toby started spending most of his time drunk. At one point he disappeared for four days, and came home in such a state that Medda didn’t know what to do with him. The next time, Toby was gone for three months. Even when the guy eventually faded out of the picture, Toby didn’t really bounce back, and drinking continued to be a problem for him. He also lost his place at the theatre. Medda tried to support him financially. Eventually Toby told her that she couldn’t live with him anymore, feeling that he had to be cruel to be kind. For Medda it was still a slap in the face. She felt like, as her best friend, Toby ought to want her there.

 

Medda spent her twenties working, befriending other actresses, watching Toby deteriorate and eventually losing track of him despite her best efforts not to, saving, and rising to stardom. The first time she landed a lead role and a marquee outside the door of the theatre all her own, she thought she was in heaven. It happened more and more. She began to realize that she had bargaining power with the managers of the theatre, and to use it, usually for the sake of her salary, but occasionally for the other girls as well.

 

Twenty-nine was an interesting year for Medda. The managers were beginning to feel that she was getting over confident. They started talking to her about aging, and how she wouldn’t keep her pretty face forever. She started thinking more about stage craft, the kind of shows she would create if she had the chance, and the kind of audience she would want to cultivate.

She also started to think about things like love, marriage, and family. She realized that, even though she was nearly thirty, she’d never fallen in love or felt any inclination to marry. She’d seen attractive people, of course, and even slept with a few that particularly caught her interest, but never developed romantic feelings for any of them. She was okay with that, but not with the idea of being labelled an old maid. She came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with that was to remain twenty-nine and single for as long as she could, and then transition gracefully into being a charmingly eccentric old lady.

 

Medda was thirty-five when she struck out on her own, and bought Irving Hall. She started out doing everything herself, from choreography, to performance, to set design, then slowly started hiring people who she trusted and paying them fairly. The accounting and bookkeeping, however, always fell to her. Her initial way of gaining an audience was to sell tickets to her shows at slightly lower prices than the theaters around her. She also started renting out her stage two nights a week to literally anybody who could pay, wasn’t doing anything evil or hateful, and wanted a performance space (she also got a percentage of ticket sales in these events).

the lower ticket prices meant swarms of newsies at a lot of the performances. Medda remembered when going to shows was her one bit of fun in a harsh working world, and was genuinely glad to be providing some entertainment that these boys could afford. She asked her songwriters to write things that the newsies would like and be cheered by, and even fed them some of the lyrics herself. Most of the lyrics to “High Times, Hard Times” were her own. She came to know quite a few of the boys.

Medda was fiercely protective of her performers’ safety and comfort. Some newsies who took flirting too far got their first lessons on how to respect women from Medda. There were also people who she considered a lost cause, and strictly banned from entering her theatre. Medda very much considered Irving Hall to be her own little world, and expected people to play by her rules once they entered.

Medda started visiting her family a little bit around this time, feeling that she was independent enough to do it on her own terms. Her mother had developed the same arthritis that had plagued her grandfather, but she didn’t have any treasures to sell, just a family that she’d given most of her life to work for. Medda made an effort to spend time talking to her, and to make sure that she was financially comfortable. Medda, her mother, and her sister got into the habit of having breakfast together on Monday mornings. Her relationship with her father never got entirely reconciled.

Jack’s father was an ardent fan of Medda’s for a while. He claimed it was because she was original. Actually he had some seedy agendas that he wanted to use her as a mouthpiece for, and a side business smuggling embargoed goods that needed an operation hub. They slept together once or twice, and Medda was surprised by how long it took her to realize that he was rotten at his core. He got on the list of people banned from the theatre by the end of two very intense months.

A couple years later, Jack got into the habit of running away to Medda’s when things were bad at home. Jack was about six at the time. Medda remembered Frank Sullivan having a son, and she even remembered giving the boy candy a few times, but she was surprised that Jack remembered her, and thought of her as somebody to run to when he felt unsafe.

 

Jack was actually instrumental in helping Medda to reaffirm the idea that she didn’t want children, ever. That’s not to say that she didn’t like Jack. She just didn’t know what to do with him, or what a six year old might need. She was soft hearted, and couldn’t really turn away a small child who was coming to her for help, but she was baffled when giving him access to as many gumdrops as he cared to eat made him sick instead of making him happy. She just didn’t know where she’d gone wrong.

Toby came back into Medda’s life a few years before the newsies strike. He went to see one of her shows. He was homeless, down on his luck, and had some impressive scarring down his left cheek, but he had more self-possession than he’d had the last time Medda saw him. She started to employ him as her “candy butcher”, and they started to renew their old friendship, cautiously at first, and then with a vengeance.

 

Jack continued to show up, and to grow into a very engaging and interesting teenager, who was more self-sufficient than not, much to Medda’s relief. Jack was good for business. Sometimes when headlines were bad, Jack would call our listings of what was playing at the theatre, making it sound like some kind of scandalous, once in a lifetime, must see event. Jack had a shrewd business sense of his own, and would ask Medda for advice on how to stretch and save his meager wages, which she was actually good at giving, and enjoyed talking about. She made an attempt to bail him out when he got put in the Refuge, but with no luck, and Jack never found out about it.

 

\- Eventually the events of the newsies film happened. We know about those.


	28. Mush 1992 - 1

\- He’s one of the nicest Newsies there is.

\- He’s very good at picking up when somebody needs a friend, or needs help with something (notice during the World Will Know when everybody goes into high energy Dance!Dance!Dance mode, and David looks dazed and confused, Mush kind of guides him off to the sidelines to watch, presumably to keep him from being crushed to pieces by the surprise choreography.).

-He trusts people. He’s accepting. If somebody has only been a Newsie for five minutes, Mush already considers them family.

-He thinks Jack is the coolest person ever.

\- At the beginning of the Newsies film, at least, he considers Jack a closer friend than Jack considers him.

\- He has very little idea of who his parents were. He knows that his mom was a black and his dad wasn’t, but that’s about it. He assumes they were both good people, who maybe didn’t get a fair shot in life, and that’s why they couldn’t keep him.

\- He grew up in an orphanage but it wasn’t too bad. He was a cute, friendly, sweet-natured kid who smiled a lot, so the nuns liked him and gave him extra cookies. That wasn’t the same as being somebody’s kid, though, or as being known, loved, and important. He doesn’t let on to this, but he figured out at a very young age that nobody was going to invest in his future if he didn’t do so himself, so he set out to sell newspapers and find his own way in the world.

\- There was a point where he was the youngest kid in the lodging house.

\- When Mush started out at the lodging house, some of the older kids were jerks, and he knew it. He hung around with Crutchy, Skittery, and Swifty at first. They had actual honest to goodness meetings and conferences about how much better the lodging house was going to be when they were older and the top dogs (it worked. Swifty kind of got involved in his own stuff instead of improving the lodging house environment, but they gained Blink, and while Mush and the others never really became the strongest forces in the lodging house compared to kids like Racetrack and Jack, they were still a big part of the foundation that made the lodge a mostly friendly and accepting place.)

-Blink got off to a rough start at the lodge, but Mush liked him instantly. He decided that Blink was going to be his best friend almost before saying hello to him, and treated him like he was from that point on.

\- The Blink/Mush relationship is a little codependent at times. Neither of them have parents, or family to count on, and they both were in need to somebody who would always be there for them and care about them unconditionally, and they became that for each other. It was a conscious choice. Basically they mutually agreed to pour all those relationships they didn’t get in their lives into one another, and just went with it from there.

\- Mush hit a growth spurt between his fourteenth and fifteenth year. Suddenly he looked too mature for his age, and much older than he felt. He also sold less papers, because he couldn’t rely as much on using the cute orphan who smiles a lot angle. At the beginning of Newsies he’s looking for a new angle, and getting used to having to shave and stuff like that.

\- Mush is really good at redirecting Blink when his temper gets the best of him.

\- Mush doesn’t fight a lot, but when he does he’s good at it. He hits very hard. He’d rather not get into fights with people, but he will if there’s a reason, or if his friends ask him to.

\- He’s smarter than people give him credit for. He has a philosophical side. He’s curious about the world and how it works. He’s got the New York streets figured out. He doesn’t have a huge vocabulary or a lot of book learning, but he’s intelligent. He asks a lot of questions.

\- David takes to Mush right away, because Mush seems trustworthy to him, and because it’s just obvious that the way Mush interacts with others is positive and uncomplicated. He’s loyal. He’s very easy to be around, and that’s worth a lot to David.

\- He’s asexual, and basically comfortable with it. It isn’t something he thinks about a lot, and the only people he’s ever tried to articulate it to are Blink (and down the road David, but for a much different reason than with Blink.).

\- He doesn’t have a lot of concept of personal space. He hugs people. He’s fairly physically affectionate, mostly with Blink.

\- His relationship with Blink is somewhere between romantic and close friends who kiss sometimes. It’s good for him though. Blink dates around (or you know, the 1899 equivalent) but very very casually, and Mush is cool with it.

\- Leaving the Newsies to go find an adult job is one of the emotionally hardest things Mush ever does. He hates the idea of any of them drifting off or losing contact with one another, or just getting lost.

\- He and Crutchy make the most effort to keep in touch with the others.

\- Blink and Mush get an apartment together.

\- It isn’t unusual for former Newsie who is down on his luck to come live with Mush and Blink for a couple of weeks.

\- The Mush/Blink relationship is important to David, because it’s the closest thing he sees to his relationship with Jack.

\- But the Mush/Blink relationship goes a lot smoother than the David/Jack one.

\- wow do I ever have a lot of Mush headcanons.


	29. Mush 1992 - 2

✚ HEALTH headcanon.

Mush has the best immune system in the world. He’s almost never sick, and when he is he gets over it quickly. There have been dozens of occasions where all of the newsies catch the same cold one after another, and Mush alone is left untouched, and that’s after kissing Blink, who was most definitely sick.

On the rare occasions when Mush does get sick, he doesn’t know what to do about it. He’ll do things like notice that he feels weak and dizzy, then wander off to do some jumping jacks, under the conviction that it’s all in his head and he just needs to get his blood moving.

a CHILDHOOD headcanon.

He was one of the most talkative and affectionate kids at the orphanage where he started out his childhood. He was always asking a thousand questions, and making/finding little gifts for the nuns who worked there. He was the type of kid who would hide the best part of his breakfast in his pocket, then try to present it (slightly smushed and linty, with flowers)to his favorite Sister later that day. Needless to say, the nuns found this endearing, but were also of the opinion that showing Mush (or any of the kids) too much affection would not prepare them for the harsh world. As a result, Mush spent a lot of his earliest years around adults who tried very hard to be orderly, business like, and appropriately distant towards him, but occasionally relented and gave him a smile or an extra cookie.

✿ for a HAPPINESS headcanon   
Mush feels happiest when he’s around his friends. He’s more prone to cheerfulness than not. He can always find the bright side of things.

␛ for an ANGER headcanon.

When Mush is wronged, he tends to get sad rather then angry. He asks a lot of questions (“with all the money Pulitzer’s making, why’d he gauge us?”), or says things like “He didn’t have to do that.”. In extreme cases he’ll punch a pillow or kick a wall or pace. Anger is something that he likes to work out physically, but not against other people.

♆ for a BODY headcanon

Mush is really physically strong, and it shows. Sometimes it makes him come off as older than he is.

ϡ for a MENTAL STATE headcanon

One thing that Mush is working through is his sense of self when other people aren’t there. Being alone a lot makes him feel ungrounded, and it’s something he thinks about a lot.

Send ღ for a LOVE/SEXUALITY headcanon.

Mush is asexual. He’s very physically affectionate, and likes romance a lot. Blink is his primary romantic partner, but he knows Blink for a long time before it really reach that point, and even then it develops fairly slowly.

† for a RELIGION headcanon

When Mush was a little kid at the orphanage, he talked a lot , so the nuns suggested he talk to Jesus instead of them. Mush took it to heart. Given a choice of conversation partners, Mush would rather bounce ideas and off of Kid Blink than Jesus, because Blink answers, but Mush still prays a lot when there’s nobody around to interact with. Mush has a very positive, God = goodness view of religion, and that’s more or less unshakable. A lot of his religious beliefs are just things that he made up, or things that he assumes are common sense.

✄ for a PET PEEVE headcanon

He doesn’t like it when someone has something that makes them happy, or fills them with enthusiasm, then another person tries to shut that down or make fun of it.

☂ for a FOOD headcanon

Mush is the opposite of a picky eater. He likes everything. He thinks everybody is a great cook. Food is great. He’s hungrier than he’d like to admit, more often than he’d like to admit. Just about the only time that Mush will get snappish is when he’s really really hungry. He once tried to cut his eating in half to save up for a Christmas gift for Blink, and spent most of the month of December out of sorts.


	30. Mush - 1992 - 3

*1) Something this character is truly proud of.*

The papers he sold on any given day, the fact that he’s a free agent, self-sufficient, and doing okay. Mush is somebody who works hard, and takes pride in it, no matter how humble his job is.

*2) Who they want to please the most. *

Everybody. It’s not that Mush wants others to be specifically happy with him. He just wants them to be happy in general.

*3) Who depends on them. *

Blink. He really needs Mush to be around, and if Mush is out of sorts and not his usual positive self, Blink gets out of sorts too. David doesn’t exactly depend on Mush, but there have definitely been times when spending some time with Mush has made him feel 100 times better about the world. Mush also gradually develops a network of older customers that he delivers his papers to, and helps out with housework and errands. Some of them aren’t physically able to do these things on their own, and they depend on Mush much more than he ever realizes. He thinks he’s lucky that they are being so nice to him, and finding work for him to do and get paid for.

 

*4) What they would do if they had one month to live. *

He’d attach himself to his friends. He’d want to talk about it, and he would until he realized it was making them upset. After that he’d just try to act like things were normal, and do what he could to avoid having a lot of time along with his thoughts. He’d make sure that the people he cared about knew it.

*5) A cherished personal belonging. * He doesn’t own a lot of stuff. If he ever got any kind of gift, he’d be sentimental enough to hold onto it. When he and Blink get their apartment, David, Sarah, Jack, Kloppman, and Les all end up giving them little things for it, and those things mean a ton to Mush, and they are some of his first real possessions,

*6) Something they lost, but would love to have back* To lose something, you need to start out with something that can be lost in the first place. The way Mush sees it, he started out with absolutely nothing and no one, and gradually moved up from there. When he first moves out of the lodging house, he’s worried that he’s lost the family he had there, but that doesn’t actually happen.

*7) This character’s favorite character* Joseph. The one with the technicolor dream coat, only he got the canon version. Sort of. Okay, so he had a book of illustrated bible stories, and Joseph was exceptionally good looking, and that was a big part of it. He also appreciated the whole dreamer aspect of the character

*8) What kind of car they would drive. * None. He walks everywhere.

*9) What calms them when they are upset. * Being around others. Physical contact. Company and a kind word or two works wonders for Mush. Food is also nice.

*10) How they deal with pain. * He tries to ignore it, or distract himself with something else. He doesn’t really see there being anything he can do about it.

*11) This character’s favorite piece or pieces of clothing. * He does eventually get shoes with matching laces. They come from a charity box, and don’t fit great, but Blink is basically ready to bash in the head of any newsie who disputes Mush’s claim on them. He sees the fact that they hurt too much to wear on a regular basis as a good thing, because that means when he does decide to put them on, they always look really shiny and nice (and strange next to all his old clothes, but nobody would ever tell him so).

*12) How they sleep. * spread out on his back, usually in his underpants. He likes to have a blanket, but in the summer it’s more of a comfort object than something to keep him warm. He has this one reoccurring dream in which he runs a bakery that specializes in making wedding cakes for dogs. Blink doesn’t even ask him how he’s slept. He just asks him what’s new in his dog bakery.

*13) What kind of parent they would be. * He’d be the kind of parent who always tried very hard to understand where their child was coming from, even when they’d done something wrong,

*14) How they did in school*. He got some very basic schooling at the orphanage. He actually did pretty well. He liked the rules and the structure of it, and he always tried his best. He wasn’t the most gifted kid there by a long shot, but he wasn’t the worst either, and he made decent progress in what little he was taught. He’s not the strongest reader. He can do it, but it’s mostly a matter of sounding words out, and it’s a lot like trying to communicate in a foreign language that he’s only scratched the surface of for him. His handwriting isn’t terrible. It’s not pretty, but it’s very clear and easy to read. That said, writing anything takes him literally forever.

*15) What cologne or perfume they would use*. If he got a hold of any, he’d dab a little on each morning. I don’t think he’d really care what it was. I could see Blink really liking that.

*16) Their sexuality*. Ace. Panromantic, but I think he starts to get more cautious about romantic situations as he gets older, because sometimes people form expectations of him that he doesn’t really want any part of, and he doesn’t feel like he can just lay things out to people from the get go if he doesn’t know them well.

*17) What they’d sing at karaoke*. Everything. He’d sing along to every single song. He’d probably also supportively play the tambourine (because tambourines are provided at my karaoke location of choice, so I have a hard time imagining karaoke without an ample supply of tambourines). If he didn’t know the song, he’d probably be too caught up in the moment to realize that he didn’t know it.

*18) Special talents they have* He has surprisingly good spelling. He’s good at calming down people when they are really upset.

*19) When they feel safest*. He almost always feels safe. He has common sense, and knows what kinds of situations to avoid and stuff, but he doesn’t have a very strong sense of danger. He just sort of assumes he will always be okay.

*20) Household chore they hate the most* Dishes

*21) Their fondest childhood memory* One night he and a bunch of newsies snuck out and went swimming in the river pretty much all night.

*22) How they spend their money. * Food, lodging, occasionally a show.

*23) What kind of alcohol they drink*. Cheap beer and cheap whiskey. He tried temperance for a while, but they other boys talked him out of it. He drinks pretty frequently, but he never drinks a lot at one time. He doesn’t like being drunk.

*24) What they wish they could change about themselves*. Mush is more of a follower than a leader, and can’t really rally people. Sometimes he wishes that he could. He can often see what he thinks is a the right solution to a problem, but he can rarely get anybody else to go along with it.

*25) What other people wish they could change about them*. Mush has trouble saying no and sticking to it. If somebody is persistent, they can usually talk him into things that aren’t good for him, and that he doesn’t want to do. This really worries Blink, who doesn’t like to see him pushed around or taken advantage of.


	31. Mush 1992 - 4

*What does their bedroom look like?*  
After Mush moves out of the lodging house, he and Blink get a little one room apartment, which basically is just a bedroom. They have a bed with tan sheets and a greenish blanket (They wanted there to be colors, because the lodging house didn’t have enough of those). Sarah Jacobs embroidered a pillow for them once. It says good morning on it. Mush considers it one of the nicest thing he owns. There’s a table to eat at, and Mush’s cup is orange (Blink’s is just a tin mug). There is a vase on the window sill, that has flowers in the summer, and there’s also a little herb garden sticking part way out the window (initially they wanted to grow potatoes and sunflowers, but it turns out growing potatoes in a window garden doesn’t work, and one of the neighbors was a mean, joyless person and complained about the sunflower).

*Do they have any daily rituals?*  
Mush cleans his fingernails in the morning, and at night before he goes to bed. When he was little he lived in an orphanage, and the nuns were very particular about the state of the kids’ fingernails, and considered clean nails to be a sign and a clean and orderly mind and soul. Mush considers the act of picking dirt out from underneath his nails weirdly relaxing.

 

*Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?*  
When Mush is a newsie, he gets plenty of exercise going about his daily activities. He gets used to walking around the city, carrying heavy things, and running around with the other boys. He holds down a job painting at a children’s toy factory for a while after growing up (it’s not as fun and cute as it sounds, much to his dismay), and he starts doing jumping jacks and going for long walks after work, because sitting all day makes him sort of stir crazy.

 

*What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?*  
He’d be thoroughly unsurprised. He shares the kitchen with five or six other families in his tenement. He eats a lot of sandwiches, fruit, and things that are easy to prepare.

 

*Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)*  
He bathes a lot, and keeps things in good order, but is worse about washing bedding and clothes and stuff like that.

 

*Eating habits and sample daily menu*  
Breakfast - bread from the nuns. Lunch - pretzels, hotdogs, whatever he can get off a street vendor. Dinner is usually at the lodging house or Tibby’s. He likes pork and beans a lot. He also snacks throughout the day. He likes bread and candy. Mush loves eating.

 

*Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time*  
He likes goofing off with his friends. He rarely thinks of anything as wasting time. If he’s enjoying himself or making money, then time isn’t being wasted.

 

*Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging*  
Pancakes with syrup. Mush enjoys his little indulgences, and doesn’t see any reason not to. He never really reaches the point in life where he can over indulge. Sometimes Blink spends money they don’t have on things they don’t need, and that worries Mush, but they always manage to come out of it okay.

*Makeup?*  
Not really. He can feel it on his face.

 

*Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?*  
Not really.

 

*Intellectual pursuits?*  
Mush really likes knowing stuff and learning about how things work. He can drill David for hours, mostly with natural science type questions, but sometimes theological stuff as well. He remembers everything. He’s also surprisingly good at spelling.

 

*Favorite book genre?*  
Dime novels and religious parables, but Mush isn’t much of a reader to be honest. He gets distracted.

*Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?*  
Asexual pan-romantic, but without knowing what any of those terms mean. If other people are happy with their sexual orientation, then he’s happy for them.

 

*Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.) *  
When he’s working at the toy factory, the paint fumes hit him really hard, and he starts getting migraines from it. They go away once quits that job. Factory work in general doesn’t agree with him.

 

*Biggest and smallest short term goal?*  
His biggest is to pay for the day’s food and lodging. His smallest is to spend some time at the park, or somewhere nice with some grass to look at.

 

*Biggest and smallest long term goal?*  
His biggest long term goal is to save enough money that he feels secure in things like food and housing, and maybe to find a nicer job. His smallest is to see a giraffe. Preferably a mother and baby giraffe.

 

*Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress*  
I’m pretty sure at some point in his lifetime suspenders are going to go out of style, and he isn’t going to notice. He dresses mostly for comfort rather than style. He doesn’t wear a lot around the house (even the lodging house, with its tons of inhabitants) if it’s hot out.

*Favorite beverage?*  
Milk.

*What do they think about before falling asleep at night?*  
Friends, what he did that day. He prays sometimes, and it tends to be very conversational (Hey Jesus. It was a good day today. I sold all but one of my papes. Maybe I’ll take an extra ten tomorrow if the headlines good. Speaking of headlines, they’ve stunk lately. Could you help me out there? I bet if you was to say, turn the East River into wine, folks’d wanna know about that. They might even think it was blood from a gory murder, then they’d all buy a paper, but it might not be good for the fishes. Can fishes get drunk?)

On a side note, Mush comes up with the oddest questions when he’s half asleep, and has been known to ask whoever is closest at hand. (Hey Bumlets, do you think fishes can get drunk?)

 

*Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?*  
Mush is pretty healthy. He got strep throat once when he was still in the orphanage, and the nuns put him in a room by himself so nobody else would catch it, and his physical needs were basically taken care of, but in a very matter of fact, affectionless way. It’s his least favorite childhood memory, because that’s when it really really hit him that he was on his own, and he wasn’t anybody’s kid. He was about seven at the time. He told this to Blink. As a teenager at the lodging house, a pretty nasty strain of measles went around, and Kloppman tried to quarantine the kids who got it. When Mush got it, Blink pretended to have it too so that he could get quarantined along with Mush, because he didn’t want Mush to feel alone and like nobody cared about him. He didn’t fake it very convincingly, but Kloppman assumed that he was either immune or sure to get sick even if he wasn’t already, and let him get away with it.

Turn-ons? Turn-offs?  
Turn-ons are really knowing and trusting somebody a lot. Turn-offs are the opposite.

 

*Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?*  
A very short letter. (Hey Blink, Are you having a nice shower? I hope you are. See you when you’re out! Your friend, Mush.)

*How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?*  
It’s hard for him to be totally disorganized, because he only has like six belongings. That said, if somebody starts talking to him while he’s putting on his shoes in the morning, for example, he’d be likely to walk over to them and leave the shoe lying around somewhere, then have to go back and find it. Mornings at the lodging house being what they are, Mush is sometimes left with a trail of clothing to track down.

*Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?*  
If Mush went to a modern school he’d love theatre and music, and probably be in the school band.

 

*How do they see themselves 5 years from today?*  
Mush has a lot of trouble wrapping around the idea that he’s growing up and changing. I think he sees himself as the same, but maybe a little taller, and maybe with a dog if things go well.

*Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?*  
Mush tends to think in the present. He isn’t a big planner. He does manage to start saving a little bit of money, though. Blink is much more the impetus for the two of them eventually moving out of the lodging house than Mush is, and he plans the whole thing.

*What is their biggest regret?*  
Going back to the orphanage a few years after becoming a Newsie, just to let everyone know he was happy and doing well. They didn’t even remember him, and he could have done without the trip, to be honest.

 

*Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?*  
His best friend is Blink. He doesn’t really do enemies. He’s been in scrapes and fights, but he tends to move on after without an awful lot of malice. The only person he really hates is Blink’s father, even though he’s never met him.

 

*Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)*  
If he was on his own, he’d probably do something reasonable like throw water on it, or call the fire department. If he was with the other newsies and they were running around in circles screaming or whatever, you can bet he’d be joining them.

*Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)*  
I think he frequently ends up being the one who comforts others in those kinds of situations. He does genuinely believe in heaven, and nice things to come in the afterlife, and he would probably shed a tear or two one of the newsies died, but he’d focus on the fun things they’d done in their life, or that happy memories he had of them. If Blink died, he’d be devastated, but I think he’d be more functional than Blink would be if Mush died.

 

*Most prized possession?*  
Probably that orange cup, to be honest. So bright! So cheerful! Very shiny when the sun hits it. It’s a great cup.

*Thoughts on material possessions in general?*  
It would be nice if he could always afford the ones he needed.

 

*Concept of home and family?*  
Blink is his family. So are the other newsies, but Blink is different. The two of them never really had anybody who would be there for them unconditionally before each other, and who they knew they could always fall back on. In a way the relationship is unhealthily codependent, but that they both really needed somebody that they could put their faith and trust in.

 

*Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)*  
Mush is so prone to TMI, and privacy doesn’t exist for him. The only thing he kind of keeps secret is the extent of his relationship with Blink, but even then a handful of newsies know.

 

*What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?*  
Sleeping in.

*What makes them feel guilty?*  
Blink had a lot of bad things happen to him before he knew Mush, like really bad things. Mush feels a little guilty that he wasn’t there yet.

*Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?*  
Emotional.

*What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?*  
Friends, food, quick naps. Mush is the master of the twenty minute cat nap, and it seems to do him good.

*Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?*  
Neither

*How misanthropic are they?*  
Not at all. Mush actually genuinely hates being alone. When he and Blink first move out of the lodging house, he has trouble sleeping without the sounds of another thirty boys sharing the room with him.

*Hobbies?*  
Gardening

*How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?*  
Not very far. He got taught how to read and write, and some basic arithmetic. He thinks it’s really cool that David went to school, and considers him a genius for that reason. He fully assumes that people who go to school will become smart, but he doesn’t think that’s the only way to go about it.

 

*Religion?*  
Christian. When he was a little kid he talked too much, so the nuns at his orphanage told him he should talk less and pray more. It worked out really well for him, actually. He sees Jesus as sort of a loving big brother figure, who genuinely cares about whatever happens to be on his mind. He doesn’t exactly know all the details of the bible or anything like that, but he takes a really positive view of the whole thing.

*Superstitions or views on the occult?*  
He’s a firm believer in all twelve or so of the lodging house’s ghosts, but assumes they are probably friendly.

*Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?*  
Both.

*If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?*  
Blink, pretty much. Their relationship is sort of 75 percent friendship, and like 25 percent romantic love, though.

*How do they express love?*  
Mush is super tactile. He hugs. If he loves somebody, he sticks close to them.

 

*If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?*  
Mush punches really hard. He tends to only throw one or two really good punches, and that’s enough to end most fights.

 

*Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?*  
Not really. He thinks he’ll go to heaven and get to meet his parents. He’d miss his friends, though.


	32. Pie Eater

*1) Something this character is truly proud of.*

His resilience. He’s been through a lot, and he’s survived, with what he sees as his morals intact.

*2) Who they want to please the most. *

Himself, but not in a selfish way. He wants to be the kind of person who isn’t ashamed of his deeds and actions, and who can feel satisfied in what he’s done.

*3) Who depends on them. *

Nobody. He’s a little outside of lodging house society. Sometimes Snitch. He’s dependable, but not everybody knows him well enough to realize.

*4) What they would do if they had one month to live. *

Go to church more. Write down a few of his thoughts. Buy better food, since he wouldn’t be saving his money to move out of the lodging house anymore. By better food, I mean pies, obviously.

*5) A cherished personal belonging. * He has a shoelace that he ties around his neck to remind himself not to be boastful.

*6) Something they lost, but would love to have back* He had two younger brothers, one who he lost to heat stroke, and the other to phenomena.

*7) This character’s favorite character* Noah. You know that one who had the ark and stuff? Yeah, him. Adult Pie Eater would try to come up with a drawn out and philosophical reason for it. In reality, when his dad told the story to him as a kid, the used to go through and make the noises of all the different animals, and discuss how giraffes and rabbits might sound, and it’s a really good memory.

*8) What kind of car they would drive. * His own two feet.

*9) What calms them when they are upset. * Physical exertion.

*10) How they deal with pain. *. He grits his teeth and tries to put on a brave face. There’s not much out there for a newsie who can’t.

*11) This character’s favorite piece or pieces of clothing. * The aforementioned shoelace.

*12) How they sleep. * On his stomach, so soundly that many find it disconcerting.

*13) What kind of parent they would be. *. Strict, but very caring.

*14) How they did in school*. He never got a chance to go.

*15) What cologne or perfume they would use*. None. If he was given some, he’d cover himself in an ungodly amount until the bottle was empty. He’d feel very fancy, but everyone would rejoice when it was gone.

*16) Their sexuality*. Gay, but closeted.

*17) What they’d sing at karaoke*. How to Save a Life

*18) Special talents they have* He’s very good at reading maps.

*19) When they feel safest*. When he’s asleep.

*20) Household chore they hate the most* Dusting. It bothers him that the dust just comes in invited. At least with dishes and stuff, the dishes are there because he ate. Dust, on the other hand, does what dust wants to do, and it’s unfair.

*21) Their fondest childhood memory* Reading the same stories to his brothers that his dad used to read to him, while his dad looked on proudly.

*22) How they spend their money. * Food, lodging, occasionally a show.

*23) What kind of alcohol they drink*. Dark ale.

*24) What they wish they could change about themselves*. He wishes he made friends effortlessly.

*25) What other people wish they could change about them*. He has a judgmental streak.


	33. Racetrack 1992

\- Racetrack is quite a bit older than the other Newsies (like 21), but he still looks about sixteen, and he likes that he is basically a free agent and gets to make his own hours, choose how many papers he is going to buy each morning, and do as he pleases without any boss or foreman breathing down his back.

\- He can speak Italian, but rarely lets on. When he speaks to Itey it’s just about always in English.

\- He’s a gambling addict. Don’t trust him with money, and don’t expect anything to come before his addiction.

\- He doesn’t really have a best friend.

\- He’s sarcastic as hell.

\- Sometimes he will go a little too far with jibes or sarcastic comments.

\- This happens a lot between him and David. Sometimes David thinks Racetrack hates him, but this isn’t true. Racetrack thinks David is amusing and interesting.

\- He likes stupid puns and the cheesiest of cheesey pick up lines.

\- He very very occasionally takes on the role of ‘mom friend’, but really only when the other Newsies are doing such a bad job of taking care of themselves that he feels morally obligated to step up and do something. Even then, he’s a rather disgruntled mom friend (“Drink some water for god’s sale you numbskulls, before I soak ya all.”).

\- He’s pretty small and not much in the physical strength department, but he fights dirty.

\- He thinks Blink and Mush aren’t very smart. He sort of views the two of them as a pair of golden retrievers. He makes comments about Mush not being a genius or having rocks for brains a lot more often than is really necessary, and people are used to hearing it, so most of them don’t say much (Blink and David, however, have been known to.).

\- He also says some not nice stuff about Skittery, David, and Snitch with some frequency. He doesn’t dislike them (except for Snitch a tiny bit), and he doesn’t quite realize what an ass he’s being. He knows he’s being an ass, but he thinks he’s being a lovable one.

\- Jack is another friend who he views as sort of a human golden retriever, but Jack doesn’t mind as much. He’d probably be flattered to hear it put that way. Jack and Racetrack get along really well. Racetrack feels protective of Jack.

\- He’s got the whole Jack/David thing figured out almost before they do, but keeps his mouth shut, because he doesn’t want to cause trouble for them. This one time, though, he winks at David as he’s going out to “get some air” with Jack, and manages to throw him into a frenzy of worry for like a week.

\- He has a lot of respect for Crutchy, and views him as sort of an evil genius.

\- He has a soft spot for little kids. He hates to see them sad, and will always go out of his way to cheer them up.

\- Les Jacobs thinks he is hilarious and awesome.


	34. Sarah Jacobs

\- Her parents originally intended for both her and David to go to school, and she did for a short time until it was judged financially unfeasible. She went to work alongside her mother at the lace factory when she was eleven. Initially it was just to have her somewhere where a family member could keep an eye on her rather than at home alone, but she got good at making lace, and made a fair contribution to the family finances that way.

\- In terms of academic ability she and David are pretty well-matched. However, she had a lot more friends at school, and kept herself in the good graces if both her teachers and her peers.

\- That doesn’t mean she liked all her peers and teachers. Like David, she went to a school that was good, slightly outside of her own neighborhood, and slightly above the family’s means. There were a lot of people who she acted the role of the sweet differential girl who knew her place and was ever so grateful for any opportunity given to her with, and while that ensured that people liked her, it was hard to keep up.

\- There were a handful of other school girls who she kept in touch with after leaving the school, but she had an explosive blow out with several of them, in which she told them all, without mincing words, exactly what she thought of everything ever so there.

\- There is one school friend who she kept. As they got older they grew apart as part of the natural course of things, but continued to occasionally send each other little letters and postcards, and Sarah was invited to this girl’s wedding eventually.

\- David never really figured out how to play with other kids, so Sarah was always his main playmate.

\- As a kid she was responsible for a lot of the more imaginative games that she and David played. When their mother was pregnant with Les, Sarah convinced David to play this game with her where they pretended to be witches, and somehow in the course of this game she pretended to send their unborn baby brother’s spirit into a teacup. Then she convinced David that he absolutely needed to feed and water the teacup daily or the baby would die. And, like, she was really convincing at this, because even then David was a skeptical little thing. She half believed it herself.

\- The Teacup Incident was kind of traumatic for David. Years later thinking about it, and the great weight that having to feed and care for this teacup without causing parents or classmates to ask too many questions, still makes him uncomfortable.

\- That said, she was also very willing to play the kinds of games that David came up with, even when his game proposal was to take all of the knickknacks off the shelf and rearrange them according to color or size.

\- She and her father talk politics constantly, and she is an unabashed socialist.

\- She loves peaches.

\- The fact that David has a sister of exceptional beauty and poise is well known at his school. Some people have tried to make friends with David to get to her. She hates those people.

\- She’s very romantic though. She likes good looking boys. She likes good looking girls, too, but she’s a little less aware of the nature of her girl crushes because of the way she was socialized.

\- She likes pretty fictional characters.

\- She keeps a diary.

\- Her diary is very much a secret and if you read it you will unfortunately have to die.

\- Mayer believes very strongly in giving children their privacy, and considers Sarah’s diary as sacred and untouchable as she does.

\- She writes poetry in that diary sometimes, and will occasionally read it aloud to family members, because you just know that the Jacobses are the kind of family to have a household meeting every Friday night and encourage those present to share their talents.

\- She once wrote a poem about what it would be like to kiss Jo March from little women, but burned it.

\- The first time she read Jane Eyre she was thirteen and had such a crush on Mr. Rochester. She kept defending Mr. Rochester past the point where she really thought he was defensible, because David hated him from the start, and she didn’t want to admit he was right.

\- She’s good at seeming trustworthy and interested in others, and she is good at asking personal questions very sweetly in a way that makes others want to answer. As a result, Sarah Jacobs knows absolutely everybody’s secrets.

-She once wanted to be a concert pianist, but getting her a piano and lessons was always out of the question. She used to draw piano keys on pieces of paper, and hum to herself while she pretended to play the piano and compose music. David isn’t allowed to tease her about that. It’s a sensitive point.

\- She also tried to learn French once. She bought a book to teach herself, but work at the factory was just too exhausting, and she never got on. David isn’t allowed to tease her about that either.

\- She made the dress she wore at the rally herself, and as far as pretty lacework goes, that is her crowning achievement. It was also the first time she ever used the trade she had been learning since 11 to do something nice for herself.

\- When David told her about the Newsies strike, she was immediately excited. She sort of had a long standing love of strikes, workers unions, uprisings and all that. They had a long conversation that night about seizing the day, and changing the very fabric of the city and all that.

\- She’s the first one ever to find out about David and Jack. She’s happy for them, and very protective.

\- By the time Jack and David start their relationship, she feels more sisterly towards Jack than anything else.

\- That’s not to say that she doesn’t consider kissing a very attractive boy in the middle of a crowd after playing an instrumental role in winning the Newsies strike to be a crowning achievement. She just wishes the boy had been Skittery.

\- After the strike is over, she writes Teddy Roosevelt a very sweet thank you note, and attaches a list of issues facing the city that he might want to fix ASAP.

 

\- She goes through a bit of a rough spot in her early twenties, because she feels like as an official adult she ought to make some changes in her life and achieve more, but she’s not sure what she can do, because she’s been living as an adult since she was quite a young kid.


	35. Sarah Jacobs 2

☾ - sleep headcanon

Sarah always wants to sleep with the window open at least a crack, even in the winter. Some girls at work told her the fresh air was good for her skin and lungs, and the apartment gets stuffy really easily.

 

\- sad headcanon

Sarah is one of those girls who learns how to be pleasing to others from a young age. She knows all about being pretty, helpful, tactful, and unobtrusive. She knows about doing her work, and not complaining. A lot of her youth is used in figuring out how to work these things to her advantage, and Sarah was one of those kids he came off as a perfectly graceful and poised little adult by the time she was twelve. Genuinely reaching adulthood will be hard for her, because she’s had so little experience in freedom, fun, and childhood. She was held up to a higher standard than her brothers, yet also had to deal with expectations for her future and her place in society being much lower. I think that Sarah goes through a sort of quarter life crisis in her mid twenties, and the results are devastating. She gets through it, but it’s hard on her.

 

\- happy headcanon

Sarah writes letters to her favorite authors with some frequency, and has a drawer full of replies.

 

☠ - angry/violent headcanon

Sarah is angry a lot more often than she ever shows. She punches pillows, and writes scathing diary entries. Sometimes she burns the diary entries after, especially if she’s said something bad about anybody in her family.

\- Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

Sarah’s dream house is clean and airy, with lace curtains, and vases full of flowers. Both Sarah and David think their mother had gone a little bit overboard in terms of home decorating. Sarah values space over ornamentation, though of course she’d like to own a few nice things to display.

 

♡ - romantic

Sarah falls in and out of love easily, and gender doesn’t play a big role in terms of attraction for her. She doesn’t exactly have a type, because she has a really long list of sometimes contradictory attributes that she finds attractive. She likes people with nice eyes, nice hands, easy smiles, and a sense of freedom and adventure (but she also has a thing for moody, brooding anti-heroes, in fiction more so than real life.).

♥ - family headcanon

One of the things that Sarah likes best about David is that he genuinely considers her his best friend for the longest time. She likes being the older sibling and being listened to. There’s a part of her that is bitter that he’s given a lot of chances that she isn’t. Sometimes the family unit can be too confining for Sarah, but she also knows very clearly that she is loved and valued by her parents and brothers.

☮ - friendship headcanon

Sarah has her own little social circle at the lace factory where she works, and she’s very much a central figure in it. She’s also very well-liked and doted upon by the older women there. Sarah’s an extremely popular figure in her work place, and her mama is proud of that. Esther is the type of mother who goes on and on at the dinner table about how Sarah took that shy new girl at work under her wing, and wheedled an entire life story and a vow of eternal sistership out of her before two hours had passed.

 

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

Sarah likes crafting, and reads a lot of books about it. She’s introduced many a new activity into Jacobs Family Game Night, which is on Tuesdays. (Jack talks about Jacobs Family Game Night as if it’s a revelation. ‘We had TEa and COOKIES then get this we made friendship bracelets out of our ~hair~!!!“)

 

☯ - likes/dislikes headcanon

Sarah likes books, flowers, overthrowing oppressive social systems, politics, freshly cleaned clothes, and her friends. She dislikes being told no, the way cats smell, and coffee. She also hates being set up for romantic encounters - she can find people she likes on her own, thank you very much.

 

\- childhood headcanon

Sarah was responsible for most of the imaginative play in the Jacobs household.

 

∇ -. old age/aging headcanon

Sarah outlives both of her brothers. She doesn’t have any (acknowledged) children of her own, but she spends the last decade of her life living with Les’ grandkids and great grandkids, and nobody is more beloved than Great Aunt Sarah. She dies in 1964.

♒ - cooking/food

Sarah hates cooking, but she’s good at it. She grows to like it more when she’s cooking for herself because she wants to eat w certain kind of food. As a child/teenager helping out in the kitchen is her least favorite kind of chore, but as an old woman, she’s glad that she can still cook most of her mama’s best dishes.

 

☼ - appearance headcanon

Sarah is well aware of how pretty she is, and her looks are something she actively cultivates.


	36. Sarah Jacobs/Katherine Plumber

Some thoughts in bullets about what Katherine and Sarah would be like as a couple —

* Katherine would be the wild, creative one, while Sarah would be the one who made their home life neat and stable, and had a surprising talent for organizing things, Katherine’s included. She’d also be the best copy editor Katherine ever had, because Sarah has a good eye for detail, and is great at asking hard questions in a very sweet way.

* Sarah would initially not completely understand Katherine’s need to prove herself to the men around her. She’d assume that Katherine was already rising through the ranks of newspaper reporting, and that she’d -made- it in a man’s world beyond Sarah’s wildest dreams. The more she listened to Katherine, however, the more she’d become incensed. Just breaking into the reporting business isn’t enough if Katherine isn’t given equal treatment. She’d also really admire Katherine for putting up with the various injustices her job piled on her day in and day out, just for the chance to pursue her dream.

* The admiration would be mutual. Sarah is more of a pragmatist than a dreamer. Maybe her heart isn’t in making lace or taking in laundry, by she does what she needs to do to make ends meet, support her family, and support her brothers. Basically, Katherine would admire how steady and hardworking Sarah was, and how diligent she’d remained in spite of all the chances she’d never had. She’d begin to learn what Sarah looked like when she was upset or struggling, more so than most people ever did, because Sarah is the kind of person who hides that well.

* Sarah is such a socialist, and very well versed in political theory. So is Katherine, albeit sometimes in a more abstract way than Sarah. I think that they would be able to talk about social issues night and day, but Katherine would frequently come at it from a more privileged perspective than Sarah did.

* Sarah has a very specific clothing style for how she dresses herself (smooth lines, muted colors, pastels), that’s very different than Katherine’s. That said, I think she has a great eye for clothing in general, and every once in a while would pick out a shirt, or a skirt, (((or a pair of bloomers))) or something and be like… This. I want to see you wearing this.

\- Sarah finds corsets comfortable, and Katherine finds them oppressive. Sarah was never made to lace hers quite so tight, and her mother would have never wanted her in something that restricted her movement, so she just sees them as a bit of back support and an extra layer between her and the rest of her clothes. This is a thing they talk about.

\- Little romantic gestures would initially come more easily to Sarah than Katherine. She’s the one who brings home flowers and chocolates and things like that, when the occasion calls for it.

\- Katherine teaches Sarah to dance.

\- Sarah recommends so many books to Katherine.

\- Sarah: But you’re my favorite author, you know that?  
Katherine: I thought your favorite author was Charlotte Bronte.  
Sarah: I admire Emily more, but my favorite author is still you.  
Katherine: You don’t mean to tell me that I’ve gone and made you unfaithful to Louisa May Alcott.  
Sarah: I wonder how Louisa May Alcott was at kissing?

\- Sarah’s fondness of Katherine as an author isn’t related to her fondness of Katherine as a kisser, but subtly teasing Katherine is one of her favorite hobbies, so the dialogue still stands.

\- Sarah writes little poems sometimes, and she’d initially be so intimidated by the idea of showing them to a *real writer* like Katherine. Katherine, however, would be the first to admit that as good as she is at writing newspaper articles, she’s hopeless at poetry.

\- As a child Sarah wanted to learn to play the piano, and she used to draw piano keys on pieces of scrap paper, hum, and pretend that she was playing. Katherine somehow finds this out from David. Being cut off from her father’s fortune means that Katherine isn’t terribly well-off, but she makes finding Sarah a second-hand piano and somebody to teach her a priority. The two of them have to pool the resources to do it, but Katherine is adamant that Sarah should be allowed to pursue things that she wants to pursue.

\- The Jacobses are super sweet and supportive of Katherine. Mayer and Esther don’t exactly know about the whole romantic aspect. David does, and is awkwardly supportive. Les does eventually (Sarah is more confident in telling Les about her relationship with Katherine than David is telling him about his relationship with Jack.). There’s at least one occasion, early on in the Sarah/Katherine relationship where Katherine and Sarah get back to Katherine’s apartment after dinner with the Jacobses, and Katherine just cries, because she never had a family like that. It’s the first time Sarah ever really sees Katherine in a moment of intense vulnerability.

 

(And just a quick note to the anon, pointing out how you are weirded out by femmeslash might not be the best way of putting things. Like shipping in general is kind of weird when you think about it, so there’s that, and Katherine and Sarah are exceedingly fictional so you aren’t going to hurt their feelings, but there are real women in relationships with other women, who might find the comment hurtful.)

(Another quick note. These are things I came up off the top of my head. I usually ship Sarah with Jo March if I’m going to go the newsies femmeslash route. And yes, that does mean importing a character from a different work entirely.)


	37. Skittery 1

\- He wasn’t a bad kid, but his mother wasn’t in much of a mental state to care for him, or for anybody really, herself included. Skittery doesn’t remember her very well, but he remembers her as being a vague and indifferent person with a messy house who forgot to feed him sometimes. He woke up one day and she wasn’t there, and when a week passed and she never turned up, he gave up on the idea and went off to figure out the whole survival thing. He was about eight.

\- For a while he still kept some stuff in his mother’s old apartment, and would come and go from there on occasion, though he usually stayed at the lodging house. Then one day he came back and the place was empty, and the next he heard a new family was living in it.

\- He doesn’t feel very charitable towards his mother, or towards adults in general. He was actively trying to stay under the radar and not get picked up by children’s aid when his mom disappeared, but he was still pissed off when nobody bothered about him, or even took notice. He figures he just wasn’t cute or virtuous enough to tug on any heart strings.

\- Once he started at the lodging house, he took “not very virtuous” to a whole new level. So. Many. Pranks. And all of them delivered so very deadpan. His desire to make trouble was almost self-destructive, but he rarely had the guts to own up to it, and he was otherwise a really quiet kid.

\- Young Skittery was basically out to take care of himself, and sort of a loner. He got on best with Swifty. He acted like he was avoiding Mush, Crutchy, and Blink, but he actually listened closely to things they said, and would add input sometimes, so they considered him one of their set more than he considered himself to be part of their little group. There was a bullying situation with the other boys, because the older boys in that era of lodging house history sucked, but Skittery managed to be passed over for the most part, partially because he was super tall for his age and people often mistook him for being older, and partially because he had a way of acting thoroughly unimpressed and above everything.

-Skittery is bookish as hell. A lot of kids read dime novels and things, so that isn’t so weird, but Skittery can make his way through long dry super novels like Moby Dick and enjoy it ((disclaimer: I only read three pages ever. Maybe it’s riveting and I didn’t notice.)).

-He doesn’t think of himself as being “glum”. He doesn’t have the most positive world outlook, but he figures that’s because he’s a realist. He’s happy some of the time too.

\- BUT he’s also depressed some of the time. Like can’t make himself bathe or sell newspapers depressed, and when he gets like that he doesn’t want to be around the other newsies. It hits him worse in the winter, and didn’t start to manifest until he was in his teens.

\- Racetrack is probably the closest thing he has to an adversary at the lodging house. He makes fun of Skittery for being on the quiet side, and “moping”, and makes it sound like not talking much is a sign of lack of intellect. When Skittery is talking, Race either talks over him, or makes a big show of make grand exclamations about how Skittery has opened his mouth, and -then- talks over him.

-Skittery hates Racetrack.

\- Racetrack thinks he and Skittery are bros. :)

\- Jack finds Skittery boring. That “Hey you, Skittery!” at the end of Newsies was Jack being so giddy that he was -even- happy to see Skittery, and pleasantly surprised by how happy to see Skittery he was.

\- Skittery and David get along very very well, but they also get petty and start complaining about everything when they talk together for too long. Jack doesn’t like the facets of David’s personality that come out when he is deep in conversation with Skittery.

\- Skittery feels bitter about the chances David was given in life, and the fact that the other Newsies accept David as the “smart” one. Skittery has some book smarts of his own (as much as a street kid who has to support himself first and foremost can get), and heaps more common sense and survival skills than David has.

\- It’s hard for Skittery to find clothes that fit him right. He’s long and lanky, and really damn self-conscious about it.

\- He’s polite and differential with women, but he assumes that they don’t much want to talk to the likes of him, and even those that do aren’t going to stick around for long.

\- He’s called Skittery because of his tendency to approach new situations cautiously. He’d call that realism more than skittishness. He’s had to come to the rescue of other Newsies who’d gotten themselves stuck in compromising situations that he warned them about so so so many times.

\- He’d rather just take care of himself, but he feels a weird sense of responsibility towards just about - everyone -. He considers this his curse. He tries to make people think he’s a hardass mostly because he knows how much of one he isn’t, and he doesn’t want to get taken advantage of. Case in point, Racetrack owes him about three dollars, because if it’s cold enough outside, and if Skittery is directly asked, he’s going to lend him the money he gambled away, Skittery can’t physically make himself not do it. The one time he tried to put his foot down and refuse, he ended up sleeping outside -with- Racetrack to share body heat.

\- He hates to see people cry, and will try to fix it.

\- He feels a strong sense of responsibility towards little kids.

\- His relationship with Tumbler is weird. He’s sort of half parental towards him, half peer, and half taking advantage of the fact that the kid happy to sell Skittery’s papers for him, and do it with a smile on his face. Skittery and Tumbler are selling partners, but Tumbler does a lot more of the actual selling, particularly when Skittery is in a bad emotional state.

\- There are literally times when Tumbler has to remind Skittery to eat.

\- Skittery never tells Tumbler he’s anything less than happy, though, but Tumbler picks up on more than Skittery gives him credit for. He’s probably the only one in the lodging house who really has picked up on the idea that Skittery isn’t silly and boring and moping around for the fun of it or something.

\- Tumbler is actually really scared of Skittery sinking into a depressive state and not coming out, because Skittery is the closest thing Tumbler has to somebody to take care of him.

\- Skittery does manage to always look out for Tumbler, though. Not being able to look out for Tumbler is his personal definition of hitting rock bottom, and he doesn’t want to go there.

\- Skittery drinks too much, but he rarely seems drunk.

\- Skittery is secretly good at singing.

\- He’s also secretly terrified of what he’ll do once he ages out of the newspaper business. He’s always felt like an adult, but never imagined himself actually making it into his twenties, and now that he’s almost there, he doesn’t know what to make of it or how to proceed.

\- For all that he complained during the Newsies strike, he’s glad that he was a part of it, and that he helped to accomplish something good.


	38. Skittery 2

*******Kitchen:**********  
*What is the character’s favourite food?* Sausage and eggs

 

*Are they good at cooking? How good/bad?* He could burn water.

*Do they leave the dishes out?* Yes. His sink has developed its own ecosystem. It grosses him out and troubles him, but not enough to do anything about it. The last time he got the motivation to clean the kitchen, he did it by throwing everything out and resolving not to have dishes anymore. They weren’t worth the trouble they brought.

*What kind of food is in their refrigerator?* A six month old molding birthday cake.

*Do they cook, eat out or get take-away/delivered food more?* They eat out or get delivered food.

*********Living Room:******

*How does the character spend weekends?* Sleeping and reading.

 

*What kind of movies does the character watch?* He had pretty eclectic tastes. He likes dramas and science fiction, but he’s up for giving other kids of film a chance. He’s not generally a musical person, but he adores Sweeney Todd, and liked Rent and Rock of Ages enough to watch them multiple times.

 

*What do they do with friends?* Whatever his friends manage to drag him into doing. A lot of time it’s staying in and watching newsies, or sometimes going out for a decent meal.

*What’s their favorite pastime?*. Sleeping

 

*What’s their favourite TV show/Film?* I could see him liking X-files, or Game of Thrones

 

********Bathroom:*******

*How does the character prepare in the morning?* It depends on the morning. Some mornings he rolls out of bed. Some mornings he showers. In the summer he really likes to take cold showers, because it’s one of the few ways he has to cool down.

*Do they sing in the shower?* Not really.

*What kind of hair product/make-up do they use?* He bought a comb once. He didn’t throw it out, so presumably it still exists somewhere.

*How clean is this character?* Not that clean. Modern AU Skittery is totally the type to spray some kind of gross body spray, and hope that means nobody will notice that he hasn’t washed his shirt in forever.

*Does the character have thousands of shampoo/shower gel bottles by the shower, or do they use only the bare essentials?* They use only the bare essentials, but they also have a thousand shampoo bottles in the shower, because they have not thrown out an empty shampoo bottle in five years. He really wishes they would go away.

*****Bedroom:*******

*How does this character sleep? (Position, sleeping habits, bedtime routines)* He sleeps on his back. At the lodging house, he is taller than the bed is long, so his feet hang off the end.

*What are their pyjamas like?* He sleeps in his clothes.

*What do they dream about usually?*. He can’t remember.

*How neat/tidy is this character?* Not at all. He manages in the lodging house, because other people would have to deal with his mess. On his own, all bets are off.

*How affectionate is this character?* He cares about people, but he’s not always good at showing it.

 

*******Attic:*******

*What is the character afraid of?* Living too long. Dying in a drawn out, painful way.

*How do they deal with bad memories?* They don’t really. Sometimes he gets angry or sarcastic.

*What is this character’s role in a horror movie?* Deadpan snarker.

*How do they hide their secrets?* He assumes nobody cares to know anyway, so he doesn’t make much effort.

*Which of the Seven Deadly Sins does the character relate to most?* He would say all of them. He’s an equal opportunity sinner. He’s not as bad as he thinks.


	39. Skittery 3

*What does their bedroom look like?*  
Dusty. Small. It could use a window. No, not that window, another one, with a view of something other than a brick wall, and no cracks in the glass. He takes out the trash every four or five days, usually, and he doesn’t have a lot of possessions, and that’s what saves the place from getting too dirty.

*Do they have any daily rituals?*  
He comes up with lots of good and useful ones, but has trouble maintaining them for long stints. He takes off his shoes when he gets in the house, and always leaves them in the same place by the door, and he always remembers to put the keys to his house on a little hook next to the door. His hat also gets taken off the moment he comes in from outside, and usually gets left on the table. Unless things are going really badly for him, he reads the entire newspaper from front to back each day.

When he’s living at the lodging house, he helps Tumbler get ready for bed every night, which consists of going through a box of food items that Tumbler has hidden away and assuring him he won’t starve, and then telling him a story or something.

*Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?*  
He gets a lot less physically fit once he stops being a Newsie. He walks to work, so there’s that. His apartment is on the twelfth floor of a building, so that’s another thing. He’s stayed at the bar the whole night to avoid having to go up those steps before, and he isn’t proud of it.

*What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?*  
Skip dinner.

*Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)*  
He’s not always the best about keeping himself or his house clean, but when he does, he’s really thorough. That’s part of the issue, actually. If he doesn’t have any clean clothes, he doesn’t see the point in showering, and if he can’t find his toenail clippers what on earth if the point of cleaning his clothes, if his toenails are still going to be untrimmed no matter how nice his shirt is?

*Eating habits and sample daily menu*  
He doesn’t always remember to eat. He’s a fan of coffee and sausage rolls.

*Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time*  
He sleeps a lot, and feels guilty about it after. He also loves to read, and probably reads the most out of any of the newsies. He’ll read a dime novel if that’s what’s around, but he tends towards more literary taste than the others. He’s the one out of all of them who read Les Miserables from cover to cover, right down to all those riveting and plot advancing descriptions of the Parisian sewer system.

*Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging*  
Whiskey. He thinks that he deserves to indulge if he wants to, because it’s not like he’s had a lot of good breaks in life, and really his only advantage is the ability to do what he pleases without anybody getting on his case.

*Makeup?*  
Canon era, no. Modern AU, maybe.

*Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?*  
Depression. It tends to cycle, and he’ll go through some periods where he’s doing reasonably well between episodes. He doesn’t exactly recognize it, but he remembers his mother having some problems, and wonders if his own problems might be similar.

*Intellectual pursuits?*  
Books! He’d like to be able to get some formal education, but he can’t afford it.

*Favorite book genre?*  
Long and heavy

*Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?*  
Bi, but with low confidence in the dating department, and not that much desire. He’d be fine with a relationship, if the other partner did most of the work, and went out of their way to pursue him.

*Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)*  
Sometimes the left side of his stomach hurts for no reason. He’s convinced in appendicitis, but if it is, he’s had it for like eight years. He uses it to get out of things he doesn’t want to do, like “Sorry I can’t help you fellas carry that, but my appendicitis is acting up again.”

*Biggest and smallest short term goal?*  
Not starving or ending up on the streets is his only real goal.

*Biggest and smallest long term goal?*  
Eventually getting into a night class would be nice, but nobody is willing to sponsor him.

*Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress*  
He’s fine going out in a mixture of street clothes, and like long underwear or whatever he was meant to be sleeping in.

*Favorite beverage?*  
He tried Irish Coffee once, and it was amazing.

*What do they think about before falling asleep at night?*  
When he’s at the lodging house, he usually falls asleep telling stories to Tumbler. When he’s on his own, he sincerely misses having a kid to tell stories to, even though he doesn’t think himself cut out to be a father otherwise.

*Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?*  
He got chicken pox when he was still living with his mom, and she didn’t notice. He noticed, but didn’t know what was going on, and tried to wash/scratch them off. It was only a few years later when some kids at the lodging house got it that he put two and two together about what was wrong with him that one time (there was also a period where he was confused about what exactly that thing where he got covered in spots was called, and insisted he had had small pox as a kid.)

*Turn-ons? Turn-offs?*  
Turn-ons =Pretty, assertive people who compliment him a lot. Turn-offs = people who challenge him or have high expectations of him.

*Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?*  
Surprisingly artistic doodling.

*How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?*  
He knows where he keeps his stuff. Even when his living space gets flat out dirty, he can usually find things.

*Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?*  
He thinks that he would excel at everything, if anybody had given him a chance at schooling. In reality, he’s very intelligent, but doesn’t have much drive. He probably wouldn’t get terribly good grades.

*How do they see themselves 5 years from today?*  
He’d rather not think about it.

*Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?*  
He’d be ticked off if anybody asked him this. Futures take a degree of foundation, and nobody bothered to give him one. When his mom disappeared, for example, he came and went from his old home for months, with nobody noticing, and then some asshole went and sold it, and threw away the stuff he’d been keeping in it. It was only when he was around nineteen that Children’s Aid popped up, all full of sudden interest at seeing him become a productive member of society. The way he sees it, children’s aid should give him a house, and then he’ll consider looking into futures and productivity.

*What is their biggest regret?*  
Tumbler. He tried really hard to take care of him, harder than he’d ever tried to do anything else, and he’s worried it didn’t go well enough.

*Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?*  
He loves and hates all the other boys at the lodging house equally. His worst enemy is himself.

*Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)*  
It’s not his house. He didn’t set the fire. He really deserves a house, and not the one that is burning.

*Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)*  
That’s better than them just disappearing without a trace. At least that wouldn’t be an affront him him personally.

*Most prized possession?*  
He has a few books that he really likes.

*Thoughts on material possessions in general?*  
Great if you have a place too keep them.

*Concept of home and family?*  
He doesn’t trust it. He assumes it can just go away at any time. Unions, however, are a lot more solid. 

*Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)*  
It’s a luxury he doesn’t have at the lodging house, then a luxury he has simultaneously too much of, and not enough of once he moves out. By that I mean, he has to share a kitchen and bathroom with people he doesn’t necessarily want to share a kitchen and bathroom with, but at the same time he misses having people around who he could interact with without having to go out of his way to track them down, and he misses the pranks and jokes that used to go down at the lodging house.

*What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?*  
He considers most things a waste of time, to be honest.

*What makes them feel guilty?*  
Tumbler is frequently the one to rouse Skittery when he’s in a bad place, and he feels bad that he has to do that.

*Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?*  
Analytical

*What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?*  
He isn’t sure. Sleeping certainly doesn’t. Coffee helps a little. So does good weather.

*Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?*  
Both

*How misanthropic are they?*  
Very

*Hobbies?*  
Reading, politics

*How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?*  
Skittery gets along well with David, and considers him a friend, but it really bothers him that David gets labelled the smart one, just because he went to school. Skittery is smart and he knows that, and it bothers him that he’s frequently labelled as otherwise.

*Religion?*  
Raised Christian, but highly apathetic about it.

*Superstitions or views on the occult?*  
Breaking a mirror is seven years bad luck, and nothing will convince him otherwise.

*Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?*  
Depends on the thought. A lot of his nicer thoughts get expressed through deeds, and his meaner ones through words.

*If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?*  
Somebody steady and capable, who will keep a good house, and accept him as is.

*How do they express love?*  
If he gets a crush on somebody, he becomes really flustered around them. For platonic stuff, he rags on the people he loves a lot, but in reality will really go out of his way to help them.

*If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?*  
Fierce. Skittery has a surprisingly high tolerance for pain, and is frequently among the last people standing.

*Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not*  
A little. It doesn’t sound like a comfortable process.


	40. Specs (1992)

For some reason Specs is the character in the Newsies movie who I always forget exists (and I know his musical incarnation is way fandom popular. I’m sure he’s very cool. I just have a habit of overlooking him).

Anyway, some movie Specs headcanons that I’m coming up with as I type -

—He’s quite the actor, when he wants to be. He’s good at changing his voice, doing accents, etc.

— In particular he can do an awesome David impression. David hates it.

— Some of the other guys, like Mush and Crutchy actively want Specs to impersonate them.

— He’s basically blind without his glasses.

— His glasses still aren’t quite the right prescription, so even with them his vision isn’t the best. He’s near sighted, so he can see things that are close to him well enough, but if you get people standing far away he can’t even necessarily tell who is who.

— He called Spot Conlon “Les” once. Only Specs himself knows if it was a joke or an honest mistake. It was hilarious either way.

— He told the younger Newsies that glasses are something that only smart people need. He also told them that if you put on a pair of glasses and they make your vision blurry it means you aren’t that bright. Oh, and he also told them that Dutchy was one of the foremost authorities in astrophysics back in his home country.

—This bothers Jack. Jack isn’t against lying on principle, but he is against saying things that make little kids feel inferior.

— Specs is sort of lazy.

— Specs thinks he is very clever and handsome.

— Specs has a very kind side when somebody is in distress. He tends to think of very logical, matter of fact reasons why things will turn out fine, which for some people at least can be very reassuring.

— Dutchy is completely illiterate, and Specs is one of a handful of people who officially know this. He covers for him a lot, and helps him hide it.

— Specs is very good at keeping secrets in general. If somebody confides in him, he will take it to the grave.

— Itey has vented to Specs and Dutchy a few times when he was annoyed at Snitch. He feels terrible about it.


	41. Snitch

*Snitch’s early childhood started okay. He was his parents’ first child. His family was somewhere between middle class and poor, but he had what he needed. His father worked in metal smithing, and his mother did piecework at home, mostly assembling cloth flowers.

* He had some developmental delays in terms of coordination. When he was quite young, for example, he was in the habit of always walking on his tip toes, and the neighborhood kids made fun of him for it. This was his first experience with bullying. He also had some trouble with things like holding pencils, so when he first started school, his handwriting was a mess. He was the kind of kid for whom praise from adults with vitally important, so he always worked hard at improving in order to win that praise.

* Thumb sucking was one of the hardest childhood habits for him to overcome. He did it when he was going to sleep, or when he was nervous or scared. It was fine when he was little, but by the time he was about seven, his mother had decided it was time for him to stop, and started to discourage this behavior. He was about nine by the time he stopped completely.

* He was an awkward kid, and very rule oriented. He had trouble playing with others, because he needed things to be done in a very specific way, or he got upset. When he was around other kids, he tended to talk a lot without paying much attention to what others were saying, and try to boss people around. When he was around adults, however, he listened attentively to what they said and did as he was told.

* He was almost ten when his baby sister was born. Her name was Gretchen. Around this time his father became strangely distant from the family. He stopped coming home much. When he did come home, he all but ignored everybody except for Snitch. Snitch loved spending time with his father, but often felt uncomfortable after. His father told him stories about his mother, and his family history on his mother’s side, but only the bad parts. Soon Snitch knew about every instance of crime or dishonesty on his mother’s side of the family, and so much about his mother’s own small misdeeds that he found it hard to look at her. Snitch’s father presented right and wrong in black and white terms, and Snitch strove to be a good boy, so that his father would continue to trust him and consider him a worthy confidant.

* A year passed. Snitch’s father came home less and less. He started telling Snitch that his mother had been with other men, and that Gretchen was illegitimate. Although Snitch’s distrust of his mother increased, she was his main caregiver, and it was difficult and confusing for him to reconcile the things that his father said with the fact that his mother was always gentle and kind with him. He also loved his baby sister. His name was the third word that she ever said (after mama and juice).

* When Snitch was eleven, his father came home and shot his mother at the breakfast table while she was helping Gretchen eat stewed carrots. She died instantly. He pointed the gun at Snitch’s sister, then looked at Snitch, who was frozen in terror. Snitch and his father’s gaze only met for a split second before his father turned abruptly and left, but Snitch found that moment almost as frightening as the sound the gun had made, and it was the thing that he remembered most clearly after. It was a few hours before somebody from Children’s Aid came for Snitch and Gretchen. By that time Snitch had hidden Gretchen in the cupboard, incase his father came back. The children’s aid worker found Snitch curled up next to the cupboard, looking away from his mother’s body, begging Gretchen through the door of the cupboard to just be quiet so that nobody would find her. The worker told Snitch that his father had turned himself into the police for what he did, and helped him to clean his mother’s blood off of his screaming sister.

* Children’s Aid’s original plan for Snitch and Gretchen was to get both of them adopted into the same family. In the interim they lived in an orphanage. The orphanage suited Snitch better than most places would have at that time. It had strict rules and regimens, which he needed, and which he followed. He was kept away from Gretchen most of the time, but he tried very hard to take care of her, even saving most of his food so that he could give it to her when he saw her. For his first two months in the orphanage he didn’t say a word to anybody other than Getchen, and even after that he found that he lost the thread of most conversations, and had trouble thinking of things to say. He was allowed to write letters to his father, so he did, surprisingly normal letters about his daily routine. Snitch’s father wrote back, and his letters were also surprisingly normal. Intellectually Snitch knew exactly what had happened to his family, but there was a strong mental disconnect. It didn’t seem real, and neither did anything else. Nights were worse than days for him. He had bad dreams, and couldn’t sleep without his thumb in his mouth. The thumb sucking became a nervous tick during the day as well, and even s thing that he did when he just wasn’t doing anything else with his hands.

* Several different homes were tried for Snitch and Gretchen over the course of two years. Gretchen was an adorable baby. Snitch was an increasingly lanky boy who couldn’t engage with people, and couldn’t sleep through the night. Gretchen forgot what had happened to her mother. Snitch didn’t, nor did he break ties with his father. Eventually somebody took Snitch aside and told him that he would have to work harder to win people over to his side if he wanted a home for himself and Gretchen. This had an effect on him, and he resolved to do so, thinking the conversation meant that he had time and would be given a chance. Two days later, without having met any more prospective families, Snitch was told that a placement had been found for Gretchen that was too good to let pass by, and that he wouldn’t be coming with her. For the Children’s Aid worker who told him this, it was one of the hardest conversations of her life. Snitch broke down and begged to be given a second chance, and was only told that breaking all ties with him and her old family was the only way for Gretchen to have a chance at a happy life. It was a closed adoption, and Snitch never saw his sister again. Although he knew that the best thing for her to do would be to forget he ever existed, the idea was every bit as painful for Snitch as the idea that he was not wanted.

* Snitch’s placement at the newsboys’ lodging house on Duane Street was arranged soon after this. He was thirteen, and was considered more than old enough to work and support himself. He was given more help in his initial adjustment to lodging house life than most newsies. His first month of lodging was paid for, and he was given enough money to pay for his initial stake in the papers. He was even offered a monthly stipend of forty-five cents, if he went over to the Children’s Aid office to pick it up. In exchange, he needed to show that he could take care of himself, and always stay on the right side of the law (something that newsies in general were notorious for not doing).

* Things did not initially go well for Snitch. The adjustment from living a regimented life and being provided for, to being a free agent and providing for himself, was disorienting. Even so, he felt under pressure to do better at the lodging house than he had at the orphanage. He felt that he’d lost his sister because he hadn’t made any effort to appeal to people, and so they hadn’t found him appealing. He didn’t want to be unwanted any more. He felt a desperate longing to be liked and to belong. Every boy, upon arriving at the lodging house, was given a small book of rules. Snitch memorized his. Just like the book said, Snitch didn’t smoke, swear, drink, or try to dodge the evening lectures that the lodging house sometimes put on. He didn’t even lie about the headlines. He tried to be polite and clean, and sell his papers that way. He was much dismayed to find that the other boys did all of the things that the rule books said they they shouldn’t, and more.

* The first boys who Snitch spoke to at the lodging house were Crutchy, Mush, and Blink. Crutchy was the one who asked him for his story. Snitch tried to start out casual, but before he knew it, he’d told Crutchy everything from how long it had taken him to learn how to tie his shoes as a little kid, to exactly what a corpse looked like after being left to bleed out for several hours. He didn’t even look at the other boys while he talked. Crutchy told him he’d had it rough. Blink offered a cigarette (which horrified Snitch). Mush assured him that Jesus liked orphans best, especially orphans who needed him. Somehow most of the things that Snitch had said got out to the lodging house at large. By “somehow” I mean Crutchy. Crutchy told everybody. He was sympathetic, but the main point of Crutchy’s tale was that Snitch was a mess.

* Snitch soon found that, while the other boys weren’t initially unkind to him, they gave him wide berth. Blink and Mush tried to be friendly, Mush in particular. That said, Mush and Snitch didn’t have much in common, and Mush had a bad habit of spacing out whenever Snitch moralized or talked about something that didn’t interest him (which was most of what Snitch talked about). Blink and Mush also didn’t seem like ideal friends to Snitch, because they flat out wouldn’t listen to him about things like staying out late, rough play (or flat out fighting, in Blink’s case), and smoking. Snitch didn’t want to get in with a bad crowd, and as far as he could tell, Kloppman seemed like the one he ought to concentrate on impressing, so he set about doing just that. He was under the false impression that Kloppman was sending information about his behavior back to Children’s Aid, and that maybe he’d even be given a second chance to be adopted and go live with his sister if he was just good enough, and Kloppman took notice.

* As Snitch became more used to the lodging house, and started to learn the names and habits of the other boys, he also started to tell Kloppman when they stepped out of line. It didn’t take him long to become notorious for tattling on others, and as far as the other newsies were concerned, this was the worst thing that he could possibly do. They started to pick on him in retaliation, targeting everything from his teeth to his disloyalty. It was around this time that he earned the nickname Snitch. Blink was one of the people in the lodging house who tried to stop it from going too far, even as he found that he increasingly disliked Snitch. Blink remembered being in a bad way himself when he first came to the lodging house, and felt like any kid who curled up in bed and sucked his thumb when he was upset had probably already been pushed around enough for one lifetime. Swifty, on the other hand, was one of the people who took things too far. At one point he managed to close Snitch up in one of the lodging house lockers for most of a selling day. (Swifty felt bad about it after, and never at any point did anything like that to anybody else, but that doesn’t make it excusable. He felt doubly bad because it was Bumlets’ locker, and Bumlets’ things were not in good condition by the time that Snitch got let out. Snitch wasn’t in good condition either.).

* Snitch got into the habit of collecting junk he found around the city streets, mostly in terms of shape and color. Scrapped springs were his favorite. He liked spirals. He also liked having things of his own to touch and organize.

* Snitch got into the habit of doing the last leg of his selling in a certain well-off area of the city. He liked to look into the windows of the houses, and pretend he might catch a glimpse of his sister, Gretchen. In his mind, he was sure that Gretchen must have something very good to warrant her being taken away from him. He had no intention of taking his sister away from a good situation, if that was what she’d found, but he did want very badly to just see her once, to know that she was healthy and well cared for.

* This area of the city wasn’t the best for selling in. Snitch was seen as an eyesore, and his accent offensive. One resident even called the police on him, simply because she didn’t like the way he dressed or the sound of his voice. Another let his German Shepherd dog go chasing after Snitch. It was very soon after being chased by this dog and narrowly escaping, that Snitch found his way to his church. It was pretty and brightly lit, with stained glass windows, and Snitch made his way humbly into it. He remembered what Mush had said, about Jesus liking orphans. He remembered his mother, who had always been religious, and that morning and evening prayers had been part of the comfortable routine of the orphanage. If any of the church patrons looked at him askew, Snitch didn’t notice. The priest saw him knelt down in prayer, after after the service was over, this man took the time to sit with Snitch and talk to him at length about everything that Snitch had seen and experienced, and everything that Snitch was missing, and felt that he needed.

* Snitch became increasingly involved in his church. In some ways it helped him. It offered firm and unwavering rules for living, which was something that Snitch desperately needed. It gave him a reason to try and clean himself up on Sunday mornings. He was able to interact with adults who acted like they cared about him. He started giving his allowance from Children’s Aid into the church collection basket, which gave him more confidence, because it meant that he was not so destitute that he couldn’t give charity towards others. Sometimes their were competitions for young members who wanted to memorize bits of scripture, and Snitch was good at that. It made Snitch feel less alone, and gave him a sense of structure.

* It also increased the division between Snitch and the other newsies. The first indication that this was happening came when Snitch invited Mush to come with him to a church service. People were cooly polite, but Snitch was later taken aside and told that Mush “didn’t belong” there, and given the task of telling him so. Mush didn’t exactly feel inspired to go back after the first time anyway, but a discussion that he had with Snitch a few days afterwards was the closest Mush ever came into getting into a fight with one of the other boys at the lodging house (and Blink was quick to overcome his usual opposition to picking on Snitch, at least temporarily.).

 

* A lot of the rules at Snitch’s church were quite similar to those in the lodging house, only punishments came more in the form of hellfire and eternal punishment than demerits and warnings.

* In general, Snitch had had the misfortune of finding himself in the middle of a very fire and brimstone sort of church, in a well-off area, run by people who were as a whole close-minded and bigoted, as well as being willfully ignorant of what many people outside of their congregation faced. Snitch focused on making himself appealing to them. He tried to dress right, talk right, absorb what he believed to be knowledge and correct behavior. The priest told him that he was special, which was something that Snitch desperately needed to hear. He was told that instead of bringing the other newsies to church with him, he should lead them to accept his beliefs and be saved. He took this seriously, but found that it didn’t work, no matter how hard he tried. In fact, it only put Snitch more at opposition with the other newsies.

* Snitch was around 13 when he first met Itey. Itey had not been in America a full week at that point. He’d come from Italy on a ship with his uncle, and in theory everything had been arranged for him, but then his uncle had died on the journey, leaving Itey alone and lost in a foreign country. More than that, Itey was dirty, ragged, exhausted from his voyage, and quickly finding that American streets were not paved in gold, and that in fact there wasn’t even anything for him to eat, or any place for him to rest without getting yelled at. Snitch knew about being charitable. That’s why he put money in the church collection box, after all. He also knew about wanting friends, because he’d seen what things were like for the other boys who had them. Itey looked about Snitch’s age, and hungry, so Snitch bought him some chestnuts off of a peddler’s cart. Itey tried, nearly tearfully, to explain to Snitch all that had gone wrong, and Snitch tried to explain that he didn’t speak Italian. Itey was desperate at this point. A few people had given Itey scraps of food already, but they had all been older, dressed in such a way as to suggest that they could afford to survive without handouts, and mostly female. To Itey, Snitch was a young boy like him, and if he couldn’t help then nobody could. There was a lot of gesturing. Itey showed Snitch the contents of his bag (almost nothing), and his boat ticket. He mimed eating and sleeping. Snitch gestured for Itey to follow him. Snitch wasn’t sure if he was doing the right thing or not. He thought maybe he was misunderstanding everything, and the boy’s mother would jump out from the bushes and yell at Snitch for trying to take him away. At the same time, Snitch saw the possibility in Itey of finally finding a friend, one who would like him and listen to him. Back at the lodging house, Snitch paid for Itey’s first week’s board. He got Itey some dinner, introduced him to the other boys, and showed him where the showers were. All of the bunks were full, so that night Itey and Snitch piled into one bed. It was winter, and Snitch found that having another person in bed with him made everything nicer and cozier. Itey, for his part, seemed so relieved and grateful for everything. Even Snitch, who had never been good at reading people, could see it. That night, while Itey was eating his supper, he kept grabbing on to Snitch’s hand, and trying to tell Snitch things that he couldn’t understand in fast, impassioned whispers that nonetheless meant everything to Snitch.

* Snitch was serious about the task of helping Itey adjust to life in America. Initially he didn’t know anything about Itey. He paid for Itey’s first stack of newspapers, and taught him how to sell them. He bought a small pad of paper and a pen, and started to diligently teach Itey English words. Snitch was surprised to find that things at the lodging house got a little better for him with the introduction of Itey. Sometimes when Snitch was making word lists for Itey, the other boys would suggest words for Snitch to teach him, which made Snitch feel great, because finally people were paying attention to something that he was trying to do. As for Itey, Snitch liked him a ton. Itey was nice; he smiled a lot, and he tried earnestly to learn. It took Itey about a day and a half to start trying to talk to the other newsies, mostly simple things like wishing them good morning, or saying good night to them before going to bed. He talked to Snitch most of all, pointing it out whenever they were out and they encountered a word Snitch had taught him. A lot of their initial conversations were things like Itey telling Snitch “This is a tree” and Snitch verifying that Itey was right and that it really was a tree.

* At church, Snitch talked about Itey. The other members of the congregation had a lot of opinions about him, even without meeting him. They hoped that he wasn’t one of *those* foreigners, who came into the country and didn’t learn English. They also hoped that he wasn’t catholic (which Itey absolutely was). As Itey’s English got better, he had to hear about those viewpoints, and they were hard for him to swallow. He worried about being a “bad” foreigner, but he also worried that Snitch was at a bad church.

* One thing that Snitch learned about Itey, was that Itey was going to do what Itey wanted. Initially Itey completely obeyed and emulated Snitch, because he was in a new place and didn’t know what else to do, but as time went on Itey began to trust his own instincts, take cues from the other boys, and make his own decisions. Itey also managed to figure out that Snitch wasn’t exactly popular and beloved amongst the newsies. Itey and Snitch’s relationship went through some growing pains once Snitch realized that Itey wasn’t going to just do as he was told, but at the same time Itey was a loyal friend and ally to Snitch. One thing that worked about their friendship was that, once Itey’s English was good enough for him to do so, Itey got into a habit of explaining to Snitch when he’d crossed some line, and what was wrong, and why. Snitch genuinely was never the kind of person to want to hurt people, and he tried not to make the same mistakes twice when he knew what his mistakes were.

* The newsies’ strike was a good time for Snitch, because everybody banded together for a common cause. It was the first time he felt like part of a family, rather than a target.

* Snitch is as gay as gay can be, and confused by it in equal measure. He thinks Itey is gorgeous, and he feels a lot of things about him. Itey is also very demonstrative in his affections towards his friends, which confuses Snitch even more. Snitch also has a crush on Pie Eater. Pie Eater is comparatively new at the lodging house, and shares some views with Snitch (.albeit to a less damaging extent). He’s defended Snitch on several occasions. Snitch, in turn, has sometimes fallen asleep after a bad day by imagining Pie Eater’s arms around him. Pie Eater has no idea. Snitch isn’t very capable of untangling his emotions in this respect. He assumes that he will eventually marry a girl, and that anything else would be wrong and sinful. Snitch really and truly believes that he’s the only boy in the history of the universe to have ever felt attraction towards another boy, and that terrifies him. It isn’t something that he talks about.


	42. Swifty

nobodytoldthehorse asked  
Have you done Swifty yet? Swifty  
( trigger warnings for mentions of child abuse and racism)

There are so many of these.  
—-

-Swifty’s father came to America sometime prior to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. He worked as a cigar salesman with moderate success. Prior to that, he worked three different sweatshop/factory jobs, because no single job was enough to pay him a living wage. He worked well over eighty hours a week in order to save the money to start up his business.

\- Swifty’s mother was an Irish woman who his father met at one of the factories he worked at. She and Swifty’s father were very much in love. Neither of them had found the United States to be quite the land of promise they’d hoped for, but they had dreams of working hard and carving a life for themselves.

\- They considered themselves married for a time, although they were never able to get married officially. They tried to keep their relationship a secret, because of the great amount of racism faced by Chinese people in the United States at this time. That didn’t keep some people from catching on. Swifty’s father got cornered and beaten by a group of men who felt that his relationship with Swifty’s mother was unnatural. Swifty’s mother was fired from the factory she worked at. By the time that Swifty’s mother became pregnant with him, both of his parents were frightened and tired. His father did the best to support his mother through her pregnancy. Five days after Swifty was born, she went out and left him on the steps of an orphanage. Nobody knows where she went after doing this. Swifty’s father never guessed that she would have gone anywhere without their baby, so he searched for both of them together, rather than checking in any of the orphanages.

\- Swifty doesn’t know any of this. He was always told that he had been found in a dumpster outside of a brothel, and that he was lucky anybody had taken him in, and that was when the nuns at the orphanage where he grew up were in a good mood. When they were in a bad mood, he was told that he’d never amount to anything, and that it would have been kinder to let him die. He tried to be a good kid, but this kind of verbal abuse formed his earliest memories. He had food and clothes, he was kept clean, and he was even taught some basic knowledge like reading and writing, but all of this was while being told he was worthless.

\- Swifty quickly got used to being either stared at, ridiculed, or ignored. Being ignored, he learned, he could use to his advantageous. he figured out quickly enough where the keys to the kitchen were kept, and learned how to sneak off with them to steal food from the kitchen (mostly bread, since he liked that a lot.). This went well, until he got it into his head that the other children at the orphanage would like him if he gave them things to eat. Instead, they reported him almost immediately, and he was severly punished.

\- At the age of eight he was “adopted” by a white guy named Sam, who organized tours of Chinatown, for wealthy tourists who liked the idea of “slumming it”. The version of Chinatown that was packaged and sold to these tourists mostly made a show of illicit activity, but they had very little basis in reality. The tourists were brought to various locations around the city, where actors portrayed whatever unsavory activities Sam and others like him could dream up, and got paid a small percentage of the profits that such tours yielded afterwords. For Swifty’s part of the show, he had to sit of the lap of the actress playing his mother (a very young Swedish woman), pretending to share a pipe with her (leaving what was inside said pipe to the imagination of the viewer), in a room filled with Chinese men and a few other European women. At one point a Chinese man, pretending to be his “father” would wander over to kiss and grope her. After that there was usually a highly staged and choreographed gun fight (which nonetheless scared the hell out of Swifty the first few times he saw it.).

\- Swifty got into the habit of pickpocketing the tourists who came to see the shows. It was a good place for him to practice, because the people who went on these tours wanted everything to be illicit, illegal, and dangerous, so having an eight year old steal their watch was almost part of the charm. He and Sam got into a routine where he would steal from one of the tourists, and then Sam would pretend to catch him in the act and make him return whatever he’d taken, and then he’d run away back to his “mother”.

\- Swifty was happier putting on shows for tourists than he’d been at the orphanage, but he still felt lonely. Having a woman put her all into pretending to be his mother for a few hours a day, then shrug, wash off her make-up, and go home without him at the end of the day was painful. As for the other Chinese people in the show, a lot of them didn’t speak English, or didn’t speak it well, so their was a language barrier between them and Swifty. Sometimes Swifty felt ashamed that he couldn’t speak what he assumed was meant to be his own language, and sometimes he felt proud that he could speak English. Swifty also didn’t take long to notice that he was the only one not getting paid. One day he demanded of Sam why he was being treated as a prop instead of as an actor. Sam laughed at him, which made him furious. Swifty stole his purse, and tried to run away, but he didn’t get very far.

\- Things got worse for Swifty from there. Without writing out all the gory details, Sam is to Swifty what Snyder is to Jack, and that’s putting it mildly.

\- Eventually Swifty did escape. He stole what he needed to live, and slept on the streets. He tried to focus on taking money and food, because he had no place to keep anything more interesting, but he loved jewelry. He’d never seen any boys wearing necklaces and things, though, and certainly not boys who were too poor to even keep a roof over their head. He managed to lift one very pretty bracelet made out of coral beads, which he kept in his pocket.

\- A lot of people who looked at Swifty assumed he couldn’t speak English, and spoke freely about him in his hearing range. He heard enough negative opinions about his existence to absolve him of any guilt he might have felt fir stealing things from just about anybody.

\- Mush was the first Newsie that Swifty met. The first thing that Mush asked Swifty was where he was from, which by that point was a question Swifty was thoroughly tired of. Swifty answered that he was from the moon. Mush laughed like this was the greatest joke he’d ever heard, and told him a couple of things he knew about the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 (when the Sun printed several articles detailing how a civilization had been discovered on the moon. Mush was pretty sure that this turned out to be a lie).

\- After their first conversation, Swifty seemed to keep running into Mush. Mush would grin and ask him questions about life on the moon, and Swifty would come up with increasingly bizarre replies. At first Swifty was cautious, but he started talking to Mush more and more. The day that Mush announced he was from Mars cemented the friendship.

\- Mush and Swifty were both around ten years old at this time. Mush was uncomfortable with lying, so he had to add “just pretending” to the end of all his Martian jokes.

-Mush eventually convinced Swifty to give the lodging house and selling newspapers a try.

\- The first month or so went well. Some of the older boys were assholes, but Swifty liked having a bed, a business where he was a free agent and paid fairly (at least as much as any of the other boys were), and friends his age for the first time in his life. He got along really well with Mush, and Crutchy was very eager to befriend him.

\- Swifty didn’t have any papers proving his citizenship. Sam still had those. Citizenship for a Chinese person living in America at that time was hard to come by (Chinese Exclusion Act again), but as someone born in the United States, he technically had it. However, he had no means of proving it, and when one of the older boys threatened to report Swifty for sneaking into the country illegally, he had the closest thing to a breakdown he ever had in his life. Mush punched that kid in the nose, which got Kloppman involved pretty quickly. He sided with Mush and Swifty on the matter, told Swifty they’d figure something out for him, and that was the end of it. Swifty never learned exactly what had been figured out for him, but he never got sent away, either.

\- As a young kid at the lodging house, Swifty’s best friend was Skittery (especially after Blink showed up, because as far as friendships with Mush went, nobody could compare to Blink). Skittery and Swifty had a similar sense of cynicism, and a similar tendency to see the worst in people.

\- Swifty continued to steal, not so much for money, but because he found it interesting.

\- At one point he stole the doorknob off the World building, replaced it with a feather duster (also stolen), and hid it under Skittery’s bed. As you can imagine, this got Skittery in a ton of trouble.

\- As Swifty got older, and became one of the accepted members of the lodging house, he got a lot more brazen and boastful about his stealing. These isn’t a boy at the lodge who doesn’t know he does it. He tries to be amusing about it, and take things that will make for good stories, or make the other boys laugh.

\- He’s a thrill-seeker who loves to take risks.

\- He never steals things from the other boys, but he does plant things on Skittery a lot. It’s always absolutely ridiculous stuff, too. Usually it’s too silly to cause any real problems for Skittery.

\- He would never in a million years steal anything from Kloppman.

\- He discovered that he really liked dancing when he was fourteen. He practices with Bumlets sometimes.

\- He feels like he deserves to get some fun out of life, and he’s determined to have it.

\- He’s seventeen at the time of the strike. The strike was a big deal for him, because it showed him that people could band together and demand their rights, and find power together. He thinks a lot of how he can do that again in his life.

\- He shows up at Denton’s office three years after the strike, insisting he’s got a story to tell. Denton doesn’t usually write biographical stuff, which is basically what Swifty tells him, but Denton manages to weave some key points into an article.

\- Swifty’s father reads it, and contacts him. He can’t know for sure that the person he’s speaking to is his lost son, but the birth year is right, and he comes to the conclusion that even if Swifty isn’t really his, he’s willing to give Swifty a chance for the sake of the child he lost.


	43. Tumbler

\- Tumbler is the youngest of the Newsies.

\- He has no idea where he came from, and no memory of ever being anything other than a Newsie. For all he knows he sprang up like magic out of a crack in the pavement one day, and immediately started selling newspapers.

\- A few of the newsies who have been at the lodging house for a long time (namely Skittery, Swifty, Mush, and Crutchie, who have been there the longest), have a better idea, but still not much of one.

\- Basically some of the older boys, who it must be noted were assholes, showed up with him one day. He was about two at the time, and cute as hell. It was hard to tell if he had any family. He was pretty ragged and underfed. Inquiries were made, but nobody ever found where he came from.

\- Kloppman was, however, appropriately horrified that some of his boys had shown up with a toddler, and every one of them had a different story as to where they’d gotten him.

\- The older boys treated Tumbler as something between a pet and an indentured servant at first, but then got bored of him, and Skittery started taking care of him in earnest, and always to the best of his ability, although Skittery himself was still just a little kid at the time.

\- Kloppman had planned on finding a place for Tumbler, once he’d finished looking into where he’d come from, but the process took a while, and by that time Skittery and Tumbler were very close, like brothers.

\- Whether or not to send Tumbler away, either to an orphanage or to try to get him adopted, was one of the hardest decisions Kloppman ever made. He did eventually find a family to take him in, since he was still young and cute. The family was fairly affluent, and he lived with them for about two weeks, before being sent back for being too much trouble. His biggest issue was that he’d hoard food. He’d always ask for more to eat, and if he was too full he’d try to hide the food in his cheeks, like a chipmunk, to save for later. He almost choked once. He’d also steal food and hide it under his pillows.

\- After Tumbler got sent back, Kloppman decided that letting him remain at the lodging house, though not a good option, might be less traumatic for him than sending him to another home to try his luck.

\- Tumbler liked and trusted Skittery a lot, and he even trusted the older boys, but he still had a lot of issues with hoarding food. Whatever had happened to him before the lodging house, it seemed that having enough to eat was a big concern for him. He slept in Skittery’s bed at this point. Skittery ended up finding him a small box to keep things in, and Kloppman ended up buying extra snacks, just fruits and candies and stuff, to give Tumbler. Skittery and him ended up going through a nightly ritual, where Skittery went through an inventory of what kinds of things to eat he had in his box, just to assure him that it was there, and it was satisfactory, and he wasn’t going to starve. It wasn’t so much that Tumbler needed tons of food to eat. He just needed to know it was there. Sometimes the fruit even spoiled, because he didn’t eat it. Frequently when something did go bad, Skittery would have to work really hard to make sure Tumbler didn’t eat it, rather than letting him throw it away. There were definitely some tantrums over rotten apples.

\- Tumbler was only sort of an asset for selling papers at first. Telling passersby that Tumbler was his baby brotherresulted in quick sales for Skittery, but Tumbler also couldn’t walk as far or keep up selling as long as Skittery could, so Skittery didn’t end up making much more money than he would have without him. He just did it quicker.

\- Kloppman paid for Tumbler’s room and board himself until Tumbler was nearly five, rather than having Skittery do it.

\- When Tumbler was about six, Skittery’s depression started to hit, which made it a lot harder for him to take care of Tumbler. Luckily Tumbler was a lot more independent by this point, but Skittery’s lack of ability, on certain days, to cope with life scared both of them a little. And continues to, honestly.

\- By the time we meet them in Newsies, Tumbler sells considerably more than Skittery, but they split the profits.

\- Tumbler is eight when we meet him in Newsies.

\- Skittery tried to teach Tumbler how to read, but not really knowing how to go about it, he ended up just teaching him how to sight read a bunch of words. Tumbler can recognize the hell out of maniac, love nest, and nude, but he doesn’t know cat. It’s not that cats never show up in the newspapers, but it’s pretty rare when they do, and the fluff piece about the cat who got rescued from a tree is hardly the kind of headline that is worth calling out.

\- Skittery didn’t teach Tumbler much about morality. He told Tumbler that he needs to be good to Kloppman because Kloppman is good to him, and that he shouldn’t do anything to screw over a few of the the Newsies who Skittery considered too nice to be screwed over. He also taught him that if he wasn’t in bed with his eyes closed by midnight, he’d turn into a pumpkin. Tumbler is a kid who will lie, cheat, steal, and hurt others if they have something he wants. He’s not mean spirited, but he doesn’t have any real concept of how to behave.

\- He gets on well with Les, but he also gets Les in so much trouble. He was once playing with Les, and he stole something from a fruit cart, and when the owner of the cart got angry, he claimed that Les had done it. This whole situation ended with tears all around, and Jack and David doing everything they could to smooth things over.

\- David isn’t sure whether he should let Les spend much time around Tumbler (and Snipeshooter). Tumbler really isn’t good for him, and Les is a lot more easily influenced than David is. The older Newsies can mostly understand that Les is just a little kid, and a lot more sheltered than any of them have ever been, and behave accordingly (with a few slip ups, of course). Snipeshooter and Tumbler see Les as a peer, and don’t feel bad about getting him in trouble, or making him sick off of his first cigar. They aren’t purposely mean to Les by an stretch of the imagination, but they do treat him like a hardened street child, when he really isn’t.

\- But yeah, whether or not to let Les be friends with and play with Tumbler is a point of honest to goodness worry for David, because he doesn’t want to imply that he and Les are somehow above the other Newsies, but he also really doesn’t want Les to get in trouble. He ends up keeping a close watch on Les during selling days, and sometimes having Tumbler come over to dinner with the family in the evenings.

\- Tumbler’s biggest fears are starving to death, and the idea that Skittery will at some point go to bed and refuse to ever get out again, or get drunk and never get sober again. He doesn’t worry about Skittery dying, but he worries about Skittery not being Skittery. Tumbler is also convinced that if anything did happen to Skittery, he’d be on his own, and nobody would ever care for him again.

\- Boots is the only person who ever tries very hard to teach Tumbler right from wrong. Skittery tries a little, but he’s cynical, and he feels like the world owes Tumbler something and maybe he shouldn’t have to worry about being a good kid, since so few people were ever good adults to him. Boots is very frank and down to earth, and he’s experienced enough hard things, that when he explains to Tumbler the concept of trying to be s decent person in spite of hard things, Tumbler listens more. Skittery basically always thinks of Tumbler as being a small child, and the idea of him someday growing up to be a man hasn’t registered with him so much.


	44. Mr. Wiesel (1992)

-He lives at the distribution center. There’s a little bed in the back that he sleeps in. He has a few possessions that he tries to take care of, and that’s pretty much his life right there.

\- He grew up with his mom, and four older brothers. He was the ugly one and treated as the family screw up.

\- He didn’t really have any particular talents. He could just about handle his school work, but not enough to make his family think it was worth sending him very long.

\- His appearance was never something he took care of, because with people telling him he looked like a toad left and right, why bother?

\- He rarely brushes his teeth.

\- He bounced from crappy factory job to crappy factory job. His mother considered any cash he made family property.

\- He was around thirty when his mother got sick with tuberculosis. At this point he was the only son left at home, so it fell to him to take care of her.

\- As far as care of his ailing mother, he was all over the place. He had a lot of anger towards her and his family. There was one point when she asked him for a glass if water, and he sat holding the water just out of her reach, and refused to give it to her until she’d apologized for every way she’d ever mistreated him. Even then he didn’t give it to her right away. The next day, however, he felt guilty about it and was very kind and attentive to her. He cried like a baby when his mother died.

\- Getting a job as head of the distribution center was the best thing that ever happened to him. He got paid more than he had at the factory, and the work was easier.

\- Part of his job, along with the Delanceys, was to keep the newsboys in line. Keeping the Delanceys in line was the easiest step. They had been there longer than him, and made trouble for the guy who had worked there before him (basically the brothers had decided they didn’t like the previous guy, and he hadn’t lasted the month).

\- Mr. Weisel was basically like, “Look, kids, I know your family is shitty. Mine was too. So call me Uncle Weisel, and I’ll be your family from now on, got it?”. The Delanceys were doubtful at first, and told him he was on probation until he proved it.

\- So Mr. Weisel bought a coffee press and made unlimited hot coffee all day long a thing at the distribution center. He cleaned up a couple of the split lips and bruises that the Delanceys got at home. He let them stay at the distribution center as long as they wanted when they didn’t want to go home.

\- And you know the line about Morris not being able to count to twenty with his shoes on? That wasn’t that far from the truth. Actually, Morris can count all the way to a hundred, but he loses count really easily, especially if other things are going on or people are talking to him, which is always the case at the distribution center. Most of the previous guys in Mr. Weisel’s position gave Morris crap for that, but Weisel stood on his side, fudged whatever numbers needed fudging, and yelled at any newsboy who complained. In all fairness, most of the newsboys didn’t, because Morris made counting mistakes in their favor just as often as the other way, and it wasn’t worth getting in a fight over.

\- Jonathan found Weisel disgusting and distasteful, which Weisel used to his advantage. Jonathan gave into a lot of Weisel’s demands just to make him go away. Weisel’s demands were a wood stove and a monthly supply of coffee beans. Also breakfast for himself and the Delanceys, since he knew the brothers weren’t getting enough to eat at home.

\- Weisel let the Delancey brothers believe that all the good things they got out of dealing with him came from his own pocket. Once he achieved “uncle” status, he let the Delanceys do most of the work at the distribution center while he sat around. The Delanceys were happy to do it, though. Nobody had ever been nice to them before. Weisel never said an unkind word to the brothers, either. He told them they were smart, good looking, hardworking, and that they’d always have a job with him. He built himself up as their benevolent employer enough to make them forget how many people they’d driven away from that same post, and that they still had that power.

\- A lot of Weisel’s relationship with the Delancey’s was a matter of manipulating and taking advantage of them, but he did grow to genuinely like them and see them as kind of a family. That didn’t change their dynamics in any way in particular, however.

\- Initially, Mr. Weisel tried to build himself a reputation of being a nice, reasonable guy with the Newsies as well. He’d chat with them a little bit, and he learned all their names.

\- That’s not to say that he didn’t have a mean streak, especially with those he thought were getting overconfident. Blink is an example. Blink was laughing about some girl he met at the distribution center, so Weisel told him that no girl would ever want to be with a Cyclops like him, then made fun of him for nor knowing what the hell a Cyclops even was. He also attempted to claim that Swifty couldn’t legally work in the United States once, and Kloppman had to get involved.

\- So what I’m saying is that just because Mr. Weisel was nice to some people sometimes, that doesn’t mean he was not a literal human shit stain.

\- Weisel’s family was Jewish, but Weisel didn’t practice. He considered religion to be right up there with fairy tales in terms of connection to reality. At one point Morris became interested in going to (Christian) church, and Weisel mocked him for it until he felt stupid and gave up on the idea. This was around Christmas, and the holiday was what had put the idea into Morris’s head in the first place. Weisel gave Oscar and Morris each a pair of brass knuckles as a Christmas gift, and told them their fists were the only higher power they’d ever need.

\- Jack is really the one who started the war between the Newsies and the Delanceys, and who made the relationship between the Newsies and Weisel go from kind of ok to all out adversarial.

\- Jack wasn’t even sure what possessed him to start calling Weisel Weasel. He didn’t like him and he didn’t like his face, and that was pretty much it for Jack. He was new at the lodging house, and didn’t know much about some of Weisel’s worst deeds. It was an inspiration of the moment type of deal, but it made the other newsies laugh, so antagonizing “Weasel” just became part of Jack’s morning routine.

\- Mr. Weisel’s favorite Newsies were Race and Crutchy, and they tried to keep favorite status even after Jack made an enemy of him, and sort of succeeded.

\- By the time the strike rolled around, Weisel thoroughly hated most of the Newsies, and so did the Delanceys. Getting a chance to put them in their place was something they relished. Weisel, with a position of power and a grudge, quickly becomes one of the most disgusting people in existence.

\- And we all know how that played out during the strike. There’s a movie about it, called Newsies. It’s really cool, even if Mr. Weisel isn’t.

\- At some point after the strike, David laughingly made some snide comment about “Weasel” around his father, who then got really quiet and then explained to David the implications of making fun of a Jewish guy’s last name (“But he’s a terrible human being! During the strike he…” “That’s not the point.”). David then explained it to Jack (“But we hate him!” “I know, but that’s not the point.”). They settled on referring to him as “Rat”.


	45. Cheerful headcanons

**Boots** As Boots gets older, he becomes one of the most respected newsies at the lodging house. The kids know that he’s done a lot of stuff, from his involvement in the strike, to his time living on the streets, to few fascinating misadventures with Spot Conlon himself. More importantly, they know that he’s kind, and gives good advice. Boots and Les Jacobs also become very close friends as they get older. For a long time Les is an overly innocent and occasionally wayward little kid who Boots feels like he has to look after, but by the time they are both in their twenties, Boots gets to really enjoy Les’ company and perspective on life (even if Les is a dreamer, while Boots is a realist through and through).

** Bumlets** Bumlets loves dancing. He absolutely loves it. He doesn’t even need music or people to dance with, although both things are always nice. He spends a lot of time hanging out behind the lodging house creating and practicing choreography. He feels happy when he does this, and at home in his own skin.

** Crutchy ** Kloppman helps Crutchy get a job at a green grocer after he’s too old to be a newsie. He starts out as a cashier, but he turns out to be good at book keeping and balancing the register, so he eventually works his way up to the role of assistant manager. His boss doesn’t like for him to have all of his friends come barging in while he’s on the job, or for him to give them discounts, but eight years into his employment, Crutchy talks his boss into hiring Swifty. The two of them have a lot of fun working together, and Swifty is happy for a chance to settle down after a wild life.

** David ** Denton mentors David after the Newsies strike, and eventually David is able to get a job in journalism. He starts out as a copy editor, and slowly works his way up to writing real news stories. He finds it very fulfilling. He very slowly gets a little less focused on being respectable. Initially he is afraid that even small slip ups on his part could hurt his family, but he eventually gets himself to a place where they probably won’t, and then he starts being somebody who does what he wants, so there.

** Dutchy **

1) When Dutchy was a tiny child in Holland, he had a baby goat named Kleine Geitje. He used to take his baby goat into the fields and try to teach it French. It was one of the things that helped him develop a knack for languages. When Dutchy left for America, the goat was entrusted to the care of Dutchy’s oldest brother, who stayed behind with his wife and children. Dutchy chooses to believe that Kleine Geitje is back in the old country, eating flowers, head butting stuff, and generally thriving in a cheerful, goat-appropriate way. Sometimes it really strikes Dutchy how different the other newsies’ early childhood memories are from his own. He went through his share of hard things, but he also has some memories that are verging on idyllic. Occasionally he feels like he came over to New York from a whole other planet.

2) When Dutchy ages out of the newspaper business, Kloppman hires him to help out at the lodging house. He basically looks after the kids. The kids of that generation of lodgers have a different experience than Dutchy’s own generation, because if one of them is in trouble, Dutchy will literally go find them, and carry them home, or bail them out of prison, or do whatever it takes. Kloppman has to have a talk with Dutchy about not over doing it, but generally he’s glad to have Dutchy working for him. Dutchy becomes like a grandson to Kloppman.

** Itey ** Showing up in America without a lick of English, and then finding himself in the Newsies’ lodging house was being thrown into the deep end, as far as life in a new country goes. That said, it was actually really good for Itey, because he got to know all kinds of different people right from the start. When Itey is about nineteen, he falls in love with an Italian girl named Bianca. He’s worried that nothing will come of it, because he’s poor and alone, but her family practically adopts him as their own. Out of this new family, he’s the only one who can speak English well, and this is a major asset. The other newsies visit Itey all the time. He’s proud to be able to show them his home, and to offer them a good meal.

** Jake ** Jake has an older sister named Ethel, who lives and works at one of the local taverns. She takes really good care of him. Every Monday afternoon he goes to see her, and she sends him back to the lodging house with a bundle of bread, dried meat, and clean clothes for the week. Sometimes she even packs some fruit for him.

** Jack ** Jack does eventually get to go out west and see Santa Fe. He likes it, but he still chooses New York in the end. He charms people and holds their attention effortlessly, and this opens several doors which would have otherwise been closed for him. He and David make several different attempts at moving in with each other over the years, and though the first few tries end for a reason, they’re also enjoyable in a lot of ways. They eventually manage to figure things out, and they’re happy together.

** Kid Blink ** Kid Blink and Mush end up getting an apartment together after they leave the lodging house. It’s good living with Mush, because Mush is one of Blink’s favorite people in the world. Blink’s work life is difficult and tiring, but he does it well enough to earn a little respect, and he loves his home. At home, all of his stuff is where he wants it to be, he gets to choose what he’s going to eat for dinner each night, and he can sometimes buy ugly, tacky vases because he feels like it. Sometimes he buys really hideous ties as well. Mush doesn’t think that they are hideous at all. In the 1920’s, when radio starts to be a thing, Blink is the first of his friends to get one. He even makes his first radio himself, using a set of instructions published in one of the newspapers ((note: this was apparently a thing that people did, and not as hard as it sounds). The sound quality isn’t good, and broadcasts of anything interesting aren’t regular, but Blink is so pleased with himself.

 

** Les ** Les gets a lot more freedom than either of his siblings, and he uses it. A lot of his adventures are styled after Jack, who he continues to look up to as he gets older. He likes performing, and Medda lets him try his hand both onstage at Irving hall, and doing backstage work.

** Mush **  
I have lots of cheerful headcanons about Mush.

1) As a kid, Mush’s fighting lessons are one of his favorite memories. He’s a pacifist by nature (and really happy when David explains to him what that is), but he can also pack a punch, because the other boys made sure of that as soon as Mush started developing muscles. The process was fun, because it was basically play wrestling, and Mush liked being the center of attention. He also liked that he was very successful at it. Mush never gets to the point where he’s picking fights, but he can defend himself or his friends effectively if it comes down to it.

2) Mush talks a lot with his customers when he’s selling newspapers. This isn’t great for buyers who are in a hurry, but Mush ends up with a handful of regular customers who are almost friends. A few of them are elderly, and towards the end of his stint as a Newsie, Mush is spending more time going to their homes and helping them out with chores, or going shopping for them. He gets paid for his time, so eventually it gets to the point where he is grabbing half a dozen papers in the morning, then running around the city and doing odd jobs all day. Mush is very well-liked by the people he does work for. After he finishes his time selling newspapers, he spends some time doing factory work, because he thinks that working in a dark soul-crushing factory is what it means to be a ~real~ adult. Eventually he gets sick of that (Literally. Factory work does not agree with him at all.) and he goes back to the niche he carved for himself with his various customers, because it pays better and makes him feel like he’s helping people. The only real difference is that if they want a newspaper, he finds a newsie to buy it from, rather than being a newsie himself.

3) Mush gets an apartment with Blink after he’s too old to sell newspapers. Their apartment has a couch, and a lot of the other newsies crash there when times are tough for them, or when they just need a little company. This is a big deal for Mush. He sees the newsies as his family, and retaining connections with them is important. Blink and Mush’s couch is always open to any newsie who needs it. The two of them also remain close to Jack and David, and Mush especially gets along with David well.

 

**Racetrack** Racetrack has a really shrewd awareness of people. He can usually figure out what makes others tick, and for street kids who aren’t -known- by a lot of people, this can mean a lot. That’s not to say that Racetrack is getting all mushy and sentimental (in fact, he tries to present himself as a total hard ass), but occasionally he can come in with a kind word at just the moment someone needs it. Also, although Racetrack tries to play at being aloof, he still gets excited about small things. Minor victories have been known to make him dance on tables.

** Sarah ** You know that dress Sarah wore at the rally? She totally made that herself. Sarah’s father in particular is good at reminding her that going to work in a factory every day from such a young age isn’t an easy lot in life, and she deserves to take some little pleasures for herself. Sarah makes lace day in and day out for other people to buy, so she absolutely ought to have a least one lace dress all her own.

** Skittery ** Skittery followed politics even before the strike. He just didn’t think he’d ever have any voice in it. He read all the political bits of the newspaper with relish, and practically lived for political cartoons. He just assumed it was this thing that he had no say in. For a short time after the strike, Skittery feels more purpose and agency than he ever did in his life. This fades, but at least Skittery manages to drag himself off to vote when he gets the chance. He’d like to be part of something like the strike again. At one point Skittery and Swifty (who, as it turns out, can draw okay) team up to write one short political comic. It gets published, and they make a little bit of money off of it.

** Snipeshooter ** Snipeshooter is known by a lot of the girls at Medda’s theatre. They think he’s a funny little kid, and try to look out for him, because nobody else is going to do it. They give him a lot of good advice, and keep him out of trouble when they can. Snipeshooter also has really high self-confidence. He thinks he is awesome.

 

** Snitch ** Snitch has an odd relationship with Children’s Aid. Most of the newsies are sort of under the radar. Snitch is not. Children’s Aid paid for his first month at the lodging house, and his first few stacks of papers. They give him an additional monthly allowance of fifty cents, which he can pick up at their office until his 18th birthday. It’s not enough cash for him to live anywhere but the lodging house, but it does give him some small advantages. It means that he can pay for Itey’s room and board for for little while when he first arrives. It means that he can take Sunday mornings off to go to church, and that he can put a nickel in the church collection box during services. It means that he got to buy supper for Swifty that one time he got mugged on the way home from work (Snitch felt especially proud of himself for that one, because he did it even though he wasn’t close friends with Swifty, and he did it without making any comment about how fitting it was that a pick-pocket had had his money stolen). That little bit of extra cash means that Snitch has the option of making good use of it, and that means a lot to him.

** Specs ** Specs has a grandma who lives in a nursing home, and he pays for her upkeep. He goes to visit her three or four times a week. Sometimes she thinks he is his father. Sometimes she thinks he is his grandfather, or his uncle, who died as an infant. Occasionally he is her darling grandson Specs, and she avows that she would recognize him anywhere. Regardless of who she thinks he is, she is very caring and affectionate, and she knows that he is family. Kloppman is a long time friend of Specs’ grandma, and he knows exactly what Specs is doing, so he discounts his lodging fees. During the strike Specs was worried that he’d have to go against his friends to make money, but Kloppman paid the nursing home for that week, and made it very clear that Specs would be kicked out on his ass if he ever told anybody (he did the reasonable thing, and only told Dutchy.).

** Spot ** Spot is secretly the biggest dork to ever dork. He gets excited about things like model trains. He knows what clouds are made of (no, Jack, not goose feathers, and no that doesn’t make perfect sense, shut up Jack Kelly). Ask him about the ocean. Ask him about medieval history. Ask him about anything. There’s stuff he doesn’t know, but as a matter of pride, if you ask him he’s going to find out, because that is what it takes to be a badass. This is in addition to being tough as nails and leading the newsies of Brooklyn.

** Swifty **

1) Swifty is practically fearless. At one point, he runs into a burning building, with the plan of taking anything of value that isn’t bolted down. He comes out with a baby. Luckily Denton is the one who jumps on that headline, because the story in the papers makes him sound like a hero instead of somebody who was going in for jewelry and got inconveniently sidetracked by his conscience. Anyway, Swifty gets a small cash reward for that incident.

2) As a kid, Swifty likes and gets along with the other newsies, but he’s a loner by nature and sometimes necessity, and he has trouble forming close connections. As an adult, he gets to be very close to Blink, Mush, and Crutchy. He finds he likes the feeling of having close friends.


	46. Soul-crushing headcanons

_Boots_ Boots has some vague memories of his parents, but from a young age he was taken care of by an aging great aunt. Boots’ aunt took good care of him physically, emotionally, and morally, but she thought it best to prepare him for the inevitable fact that he was going to outlive her. She was convinced that she might go any moment. That means that three-year-old Boots was already being given instructions about what to do when his aunt died. He was also introduced, very early on, to the idea that he wouldn’t be given a fair shot in life, and he’d have to fight for everything. After his aunt did die, Boots lived on the streets for a while, before finding his place among the newsies. He has a very clear idea of right and wrong, and he struggles to uphold it in a world where much of his life is an uphill battle, and the other boys engage in all kinds of tricks and shortcuts that he knows his aunt wouldn’t have approved of.

 _Bumlets_ Bumlets has a family that genuinely cares about him. However, it’s a huge family, and he was basically seen as a slightly short adult from the age of twelve onwards. There’s an expectation that he’ll make his own way in the world, and pop in for dinner at home every once in a while, hopefully with some money for the household. He doesn’t actually feel very grown up, or very prepared to do everything on his own, but he tries. Kloppman makes fun of him in a way that he doesn’t any of the other kids at the lodging house. He appears to take it well, but it bugs him. Also, his oldest sister, who he was very close to, gave birth to triplets slightly after the newsies strike, and doesn’t have as much time for him as she used to.

 _Crutchy_ Crutchy went through just about every childhood illness in quick succession. His mother was very young, and very unprepared. He got left at a hospital. Nobody ever came back for him. By the time we meet him in newsies, he’s in fairly good health (and already being immune to things like mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough, etc serves him pretty well.), but he doesn’t expect anybody to stick by him if he isn’t totally self-sufficient, healthy and happy. For the most part, he really is happy and enthusiastic about life, but he’s unlikely to tell anybody if something is wrong. He’s a bit of a gossip, and if any of the boys’ deepest darkest secrets make the rounds of the lodging house, you can bet Crutchy was the one to tell everybody. Subconsciously, he does this because he wants to see how the boys react to other people having problems. Crutchy isn’t malicious. He doesn’t mean to do it, and sometimes after he has the vague awareness that he’s gotten carried away and said too much.

 _David_ David has an anxiety disorder, and he was bullied at school. He doesn’t know how to talk to people, and that’s hard for him. He feels under pressure to lift his family into better circumstances by Succeeding, and he’s still not sure where his own needs and desires fall in that plan.

 _Dutchy_ Dutchy was the only member of his family to survive the boat trip to America (although he has one brother, a sister in law, and some nieces and nephews in Holland who didn’t attempt the trip). The trip to America was terrifying, and while he’d rather go back to Holland than live in America indefinitely, he doesn’t have the courage to complete the journey. His family was somewhat well-off back in the home country, and they were able to afford a decent education for Dutchy and his brothers. Dutchy has undiagnosed dyslexia, and never managed to learn how to read, even though he tried his best. It made his family very angry with him, though they were loving in other ways. He heard many a speculative conversation between his parents about whether he was stupid or just lazy (His father once locked him in a room until he told him which one it was. When Dutchy finally broke down and answered ‘stupid’ his father was more disgusted than he’d ever seen him). Dutchy is far from the only illiterate orphan in the city of New York, but he feels more than usually embarrassed by it, because he had the chance to learn and failed. In general, he feels an incredible amount of stress and embarrassment whenever anything potentially academic presents itself, and that interferes with his ability to learn things more than his actual disability does. He has low self-confidence, which he deals with by being the newsies equivalent of a class clown.

 _Itey_ Itey grew up with a poor but very affectionate family in Italy. He was the oldest son. He was tall and healthy, and considered the most eloquent person in his family by far. His father used to joke that he could talk the sun and moon down from the sky if he so chose. That’s how he convinced his uncle to take him along on his trip to America. Itey had heard so many things about America and opportunities, and he was eager to try his fortune. The boat trip happened. The food was wormy, and the water unclean. There was an outbreak of influenza on the ship. Conditions were terrible, and many people died. Itey’s uncle was among them, although it’s unclear whether his cause of death was influenza or dysentery. Either way, Itey had to throw his body overboard. Itey became sick himself, but he survived the journey. He got off the boat entirely alone, and without any knowledge of the country or the English language. Snitch found him and brought him to live with the newsies. From there is was a struggle to communicate, to be his own person, to know things, and to be known by others. Itey frequently found himself treated like a child, or like he was incapable of making his own choices, simply because he didn’t know things. He also discovered that he missed his home and family dreadfully, and a huge part of him really regretted undertaking the journey. He tried to make the best of it, because he didn’t see any way back.

 _Jake_ Jake’s mother died of cancer. He was around fifteen when it happened, but she was sick for a long time before that. The job of taking care of her fell to Jake and his sister Ethel. Even when Jake’s mother was at her sickest, she was an incredibly caring person. Taking care of her wasn’t always easy, because Jake did not like to see her sick and in pain, but Jake would have gladly done that for his entire life if it still meant that he could still talk to her and get advice. When he first comes to the lodging house, he still often wakes up with a start at night, thinking he needs to fetch her water or medicine. When we meet Jake in newsies, he’s very new to the lodging house. He’s shy, and still navigating his own grief, and trying to figure out where he stands with the other boys. He wants friends desperately, but tends to be peripheral in newsies social interactions, just because he hasn’t been there long.

 _Jack_ Jack’s mother was one of the few people to ever treat him with love and kindness, and she died in childbirth when he was very young. His father was (at various times) not there, abusive towards Jack, or nice to him because he felt he could use Jack for some purpose. Jack turned to playing pretend to help him deal with the harsh realities of his life. Jack is intellectually, but not always emotionally aware of what is real and what isn’t. He has undiagnosed ADHD, which works out okay for him as a Newsie, but not in places like the Refuge. The Refuge was terrible for him. Snyder picks certain kids to focus on, occasionally as special Refuge success stories, and sometimes as objects of hatred and violence. Jack was in the later group. His treatment at the Refuge went beyond what normal prisoners there faced (which, it’s worth noting, wasn’t nice), and verged on physical and emotional torture. Snyder went on a power trip with Jack which even he is slightly afraid of having exposed, which partially explains his particular vehemence in terms of recapturing him.

 _Kid Blink_ Kid Blink was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by his father. It started out mild, and got worse after his mother passed away. His mother was quiet, pretty, and put more effort into protecting the family cat than she did Blink (mostly because she was terrified, and the cat wasn’t ever targeted in an of itself, just when Blink’s father wanted to punish her.). Around the time that Blink was eight, his father remarried and went through a cycle of kicking Blink out of the house to live on the streets, and then finding him and making him come back. Whenever Blink’s father found him after kicking him out, a few weeks would pass in which his father would treat him very well, and spoil him with whatever he wanted, before the cycle of abuse started again. Blink lost his eye during one of his periods of living on the street. He was playing with fireworks, one of which turned out to be faulty, and went off the wrong direction. He into an alleyway to hide after, and stayed there for nearly a day and a half before anybody found him. By that time he was running a high fever, and entirely delirious. He actually bit the person who tried to carry him to help (a young man who was in New York attending university, and genuinely did care and want to help.). He ended up being sent to the Refuge for rehabilitation. His Refuge experience was better than most people’s, because he was there for care and medicine, rather than because he had committed any crime. His first few days were incredibly scary, though, because he was tied down to a bed to keep him from further injuring his eye, because they thought that would be the best thing for trying to save at least some of his vision. He was too sick and medicated to understand what was happening. He genuinely thought he’d died and gone to hell for a while. Out of all the newsies, he’s one who came to the lodging house in especially rough shape. He was initially bullied by a lot of the older kids at the lodging house when he first arrived.   
His way of dealing with it all as he gets older is to pretend that nothing before his arrival at the lodging house happened.

 _Les_ Les never really gets anything of his own. It’s all hand-me-downs from his siblings. He doesn’t even get his own bed until he’s well into his teens. David is a lot more academically gifted than Les is, and sometimes he expects Les to follow in his footsteps, whether Les wants to or not.

 _Mush_ One of Mush’s biggest troubles is the idea that he’s unwanted and insignificant. He grew up in an orphanage, where he was never physically mistreated or left wanting, but where the people who cared for him didn’t let themselves get too close to him, because they felt like that would be setting a bad precedent. Mush was flat out told that he wouldn’t have a lot of chances in life, and that he wouldn’t succeed or most likely ever be loved. He was told that he should be good anyway, because goodness is its own reward. Mush doesn’t know his own history very well. He’s incredibly affectionate and kind by nature, but he doesn’t know that that should be reciprocated. His least favorite thing is being left alone, or being isolated.

 

 _Racetrack_ Racetrack is genuinely addicted to gambling. He’s much older than the other newsies (early twenties), and one of the reasons he continues to sell papers is because he can’t quite figure out how to get his life together. Beyond his addiction, he’s one of the nicest, funniest people ever. He’s got a strong wit and a good head on his shoulders. Living life the way he’d like to is always just beyond his grasp. Things slip through his fingers. In truth, he’s never had much, and it’s always been an uphill battle to get what little he does have for his own, even without the gambling problem. Responsibility scares him. The eventuality that he’ll have to make a respectable adult of himself one of these days scares him too. The races and the card games represent hope to him.

 _Sarah_ Sarah had to grow up early. Both of her brothers’ education was deemed as more important than her own, so she had to leave school early, even though she loved it and was exceptionally good at it. She went to work at a lace factory with her mother around the time she turned ten. Sarah was never allowed to have grand dreams, or pursue a lot of her own interests. Fun was never treated as a priority in Sarah’s life. A lot of this was because she was a girl from a poor family.

 

 _Skittery_ Skittery’s mother suffered from depression. She never meant to get pregnant and have a child, and having an unwanted kid made it worse. She was never cruel to him, but she was also never emotionally present. She tried to make sure he had food and place to live. She never cleaned their house. She fed him, and that’s a big deal. She struggled, and never got any help. Skittery doesn’t really understand this. He only understands that she disappeared one day without a word. He was nine. He spent some time living at the apartment by himself, then he took to selling newspapers. He still kept some of his stuff in his old apartment, so he was miffed when one day he came back to find that his stuff had been thrown out, and the apartment had gone to a new family. Skittery kept thinking that somebody would come and deal with the fact that his mother was gone, but it never happened. As he got older, Skittery also developed depression. He has no word for it, or understanding of what’s happening to him. He just knows that he’s desperately unhappy, and can’t find a way of dealing with it. It tends to be seasonal. He’s happier in the summer than in the winter. He tends to be better in the mornings than at night. Sometimes he just wishes somebody, literally anybody, would notice his struggles and help him. Sometimes he hates himself and thinks he is lazy and worthless. Sometimes he manages to drag himself into doing something, and then feels worse when it falls apart. Skittery does still have some things between himself and despair, but he’s very afraid of losing them, or losing himself. He feels like the ground is slowly being pulled out from under him.

 _Snipeshooter_ Snipeshooter has never known much other than being a Newsie. He’s vaguely aware of where he came from. He even has a former step father who he stops in to say hi to once in a while, and who doesn’t mind him. As an adult he will come to realize that he never really got to be a child. He’s pretty sure he was born smoking, drinking, swearing, and knowing too much. He’s not sure he likes it. He wonders why nobody ever cared enough to stop him.

 

 _Snitch_ Snitch’s father shot his mother at the breakfast table. Snitch was there at the time. He was eight years old. She was helping his baby sister eat stewed carrots. After he did it, Snitch’s father walked out of the room and turned himself in to the police. He explained to Snitch that he’d done it because his mother had been cheating on him. Prior to this event, Snitch’s family life had seemed happy to him. He loved both of his parents. He still loves his dad, even though he doesn’t agree with what he did. He rationalizes it that he doesn’t agree with what his mom did either. He’s really confused about the whole thing, and immensely traumatized. After the event, Children’s Aid picked up Snitch and his sister. They went through orphanages together, and also had some adoption try-outs of sorts. It was really important to Snitch that he and his sister stayed together, and he did everything in his power to take care of her and raise her well. He was a really good big brother. However, an adoption placement was eventually found for her but not him. Everybody wanted the adorable one and a half year old. Nobody wanted the eight year old who had seen too much. He took that to heart. It was a closed adoption, so Snitch wasn’t allowed any further contact with his sister. Children’s Aid helped Snitch find a position working as a newsie. They even paid his first month in the lodging house, because they felt guilty for not being able to help him more. Snitch tries very hard to be Good and win praise, particularly from adults. This results in a lot of tattling and things like that, to prove that he is a good boy who knows how to behave, even if others don’t. He has a hard time interacting with the other newsies, and is the target of more teasing by the other boys than anybody else in the lodging house.

 _Specs_ Actually. Specs does pretty well for himself. He sometimes watches his friends struggle, and feels bad about that. The other newsies are very important to him though, even though ones he’s not super close to, and he wants them to make it. They’re underdogs. He’s an underdog. Their struggles are his, and when one of them gets overcome by those struggles, it’s demoralising. They’re all in this poor raggedy orphans selling newspapers business together after all. He has an unrequited crush on Dutchy, but they talk about it, and it’s okay. Also one time his creepy identical twin went on a killing spree.

 _Spot_ Yes, Spot is the king of Brooklyn, but he’s also a fourteen year old kid who had to fight tooth and nail to get there. It’s not even so much that he wants all that responsibility, but he got where he was under the illusion that being the top dog would make him safe. It doesn’t actually do anything of the sort. A lot of what he does is show and keeping up appearances. His power isn’t as much as it seems in the newsies movie, and it is precarious at best. Spot has always had to take care of himself, and he always has to watch his back. Security and safety are things Spot has never experienced. Have I mentioned that he’s really really young? Because he’s really really really young.

 _Swifty_ The Chinese Exclusion Act means a lot of closed doors for Swifty. As a young child he was “adopted” by an Irish man named Sam, who led bourgeois tours of Chinatown, complete with actors and staged gunfights and things. Swifty was not a paid actor because he was only a small kid, but he was forced to act a role under Sam’s instructions. Sam was a person who often felt powerless in his life, and took it out on Swifty, to disastrous effect. He was intensely cruel and abusive to Swifty. Swifty, who is generally fearless, is every bit as scared of Sam as Jack is of warden Snyder. Swifty escaped, but the dread of being found again is always in the back of his mind. Sam has Swifty’s birth certificate, and all of the paperwork pertaining to Swifty’s American citizenship.


	47. Reading Headcanons

** Boots ** Boots is one of the best readers in the lodging house. His great aunt taught him. He doesn’t take stock in sensation novels, and a lot of the stuff he reads has some kind of moral. Boots’ taste in literature is a lot more preachy than he is. He also reads the newspaper from front to back most days. Boots is always a little surprised when some of the other boys aren’t great at reading.

** Bumlets ** Bumlets is the third oldest kid in his rather large family (because yes, he’s one of a very few newsies to have one). His dad taught him to read in Spanish, and his oldest sister finished the process. He learned to speak English before he learned how to read and write it, and his spelling isn’t the best, but he can do it. In Spanish, he’s a pretty good writer, though he only writes letters. His childhood best friend moved to Boston, and Bumlets exchanges epic letters with him about once a month. His letters are very detailed and witty. They’d provide great insight into lodging house life. He’s so glad that the other boys at the newsies’ lodging house can’t read them.

** David ** David reads so much. A lot of it is assigned reading, but as far as homework goes, he doesn’t consider having to read a book to be a bad thing. He and Sarah started a book club once Sarah left school. They read a book about every two weeks, and they take turns choosing the books. Not reading the other person’s book would be the ultimate betrayal. It’s good for David, because he and Sarah have different tastes. They can agree on a few things. They both like Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas. They both felt very rebellious for reading Dracula, only to decide that it wasn’t a good book at all. Frankenstein was much better as far as that genre goes. They will argue about the Brontes until the end of time. Sarah likes poetry better than David does. Neither of them consider Dickens the best thing that ever was, though Sarah is more disillusioned with him than David is.

** Dutchy ** Dutchy is dyslexic. He can’t read. He can’t even recognize the entire alphabet (though he can totally recite it). It’s not a matter of him being mentally incapable. It’s more that when his family was still alive and living in Holland, they tried to have him taught, and they got mad at him for not learning it quickly. He developed a great deal of anxiety around the whole thing. It’s the only thing that really phases him. He doesn’t think he can do it, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. After he found himself in America and on his own, he just always managed to find ways around it. He tries to keep his illiteracy a secret. He’s good at it. The only person he’s officially told is Specs. Racetrack and Bumlets know.

** Jack ** Jack is actually a voracious reader. His mom taught him how, and taught him to love it. It’s probably the best gift she gave him in her short life. It’s all dime novels and newspaper articles, with a thrilling serial or two thrown in for good measure, but he definitely reads. With books he either devours the whole thing quickly, or abandons it part way through in favor of something else. He doesn’t always abandon books because he doesn’t like them. Often it’s just a matter of distraction. That said, good luck distracting him from a book that he really really likes. A lot of the books he reads are fairly similar, so the plots get a bit muddled in his mind. If he finds something boring, there’s no chance whatsoever that he’ll finish it.

** Kid Blink ** Kid Blink couldn’t do more than sound out a few words when he first got to the lodging house. His life was never stable enough to let him learn. Once he started to get more settled, he enrolled in night classes, which were free for the newsies. It was tiring working all day then having a class to go to at night, but he’s glad he did it. At the time he was afraid of being the oldest kid in the class, but he wasn’t. Mush went to the first couple of lessons with him, even though he was able to read at the time. Blink got to the point where he would read books for fun at least a couple of times a year. Blink is an amazing story teller, and tends to retell any book he reads to anybody who wants to listen later. He doesn’t always stick entirely to the plot, but a lot of the newsies prefer Blink’s retellings to the books themselves. They are high entertainment.

One time David told Mush about how much he liked Les Miserables. Mush got interested, but couldn’t handle the dense language. Blink made a valiant attempt at reading it to retell it to Mush (and anybody else interested). He also ended up giving up, but the retelling continued long after Blink stopped reading. In Blink’s version of Les Miserables, Fantine and Jean Valjean got married and raised Cosette together. Javert popped in here and there to be a mustache twirling villain and harass the Valjean household, and even kidnapped Cosette at least three times. Cosette escaped and had a stint selling newspapers and learning how to be a street fighter, before being reunited with her family. The real villain was the Bishop, who showed up many years later, demanding payment for those candlesticks (with interest!), and vowing to personally destroy each member of the Valjean family if it didn’t happen. Blink didn’t get to the whole barricade thing. Cosette defeated the bishop (in a very impolite way involving those candlesticks…) and there the story ended. More than a few newsies consider this to genuinely be the plot of Les Mis.

Not entirely related to reading, but I think Kid Blink matches Jack is his ability to tell fantastical and far-fetched tale. Blink just presents his stuff as fiction, while Jack presents his as fact. Jack’s version of events would be about his good friend Johnny French who stole some candlesticks, and was rescued by his prize fighting daughter

** Mush ** The orphanage that Mush grew up at provided basic schooling, and Mush dutifully learned what he was told. He can recognize every letter of the alphabet. He’s got an okay grasp on phonics and working out how to say words based in the letters he sees. He’s patient about sounding out longer words. When phonics fails him (because English is pretty damn inconsistent), he can work out what the word is supposed to be more often than not. The way he was taught didn’t focus on the meaning of what he was reading, so much as it did letters and sounds. His reading abilities are very much about figuring out what word he’s seeing, rather than connecting all the words to get the meaning. He can deal with newspaper headlines. He rarely bothers with the whole article. A book would be beyond him. Mush is an entry level reader. It’s not automatic for him.

**Racetrack** Racetrack reads just fine. He’s not into novels, but he thinks it’s a handy way to get information. He’s older and more aware than a lot of the other newsies that some kids struggle with it. It’s a thing that he picks up on. One thing that absinthe-terminus pointed out to me is the possibility that he gets into talking about the headlines each morning to give the kids who can’t read them a chance to know what they are, while still saving their pride.

**Sarah** One of Sarah’s biggest fears when she left school to go work with her mother at the lace factory, was that she wouldn’t have time to read anymore, or that she’d be too tired. A lot of the older women she worked with talked about things like that. In truth, Sarah does often feel tired after work. Her book club with David is a big effort on her part to make sure reading is something she continues to do. One of her biggest fears is that one day she’ll have children and never have a chance to pick up a book or do anything other than work and house chores again for the rest of her life.

**Skittery** Skittery and David have similar taste in books. Skittery reads big thick things, and some of the boys make fun of him for it, or joke about other uses for Skittery’s books (toilet paper? A tool with which to bludgeon his enemies?). Sometimes Skittery talks books with David, and sometimes he gets defensive. It bugs him that he has the reputation of being “dumb and glum” while David has the reputation of being smart.


	48. Friendship headcanons

David’s best friend is Jack. Other than Jack, the Newsie he is closest to is Mush.

Jack’s best friend is David. Pre-David he didn’t want to become too close to the others, because he was planning on leaving and all, and worried about his criminal record, but Crutchy, Blink, Spot, and Racetrack were super important friends for him, and I think those relationships will get even stronger post strike.

Blink’s best friend is Mush, and Mush’s best friend is Blink. They have a lot of other friends, but are especially crucial to each other.

Dutchy and Specs are best friends. Specs has a crush on Dutchy. Dutchy would be cool with that if he knew, but it would still be unrequited.

Snitch and Itey are best friends, but the longer they know each other, the more strain that friendship experiences, because Snitch is kind of possessive, and because he thinks he can tell Itey what to do. They met when Itey was very new to the country, and didn’t speak English, so he believed Snitch and followed his lead on most things. After Itey gets used to New York, he starts speaking his mind, doing what he wants, and trying to talk to more people. I think they’ll work things out, but part of that will have to be distance. Snitch also gets along very well with Pie Eater, but not many of the other newsies.

Racetrack is wary of becoming best friends with any of the other newsies, because he doesn’t want others to see him as somebody to depend on. Spot is one of the friends he’s known the longest, and one of the friendships he’s willing to put the most effort into. He likes Jack a lot, and is protective of him. Racetrack might have at some point lost sleep over the well-being of Jack Kelly, and he’s well and thoroughly pissed off at himself for that.

Bumlets’ closest friends aren’t newsies. He lives at Duane Street, and sells papers alongside the other boys, but he also had his own personal life that he doesn’t invite most of them into. He likes Dutchy a lot, but only when Specs isn’t around, because when the two of them are together all they do is goof off. He also gets on well with Swifty, but isn’t sure how much he can trust him. Skittery is another peripheral sort of friend. Bumlets actually has parents, and several sisters. Dutchy is the only Newsie that Bumlets has ever brought to meet his family.

Swifty gets along with everybody, but doesn’t have a best friend, or even a particularly close friend. He’s there for good times with the other boys, but he’s a loner.

Boots sort of falls somewhere between the younger newsies and the older newsies. He’s friends with Tumbler and Snipeshooter, but also feels like he’s babysitting them a lot of the time. He also gets along well with David and Jack. Spot is his scary friend that he avoids, but sometimes finds that he enjoys being around when his attempts to stay far far away fail. As he gets older, I think he’ll strike up a very strong friendship with Les.

Skittery’s key relationship is with Tumbler, but that’s more family like than friendly. He takes care of Tumbler, and sometimes the sense of responsibility is what keeps him going. He’s known Mush, Blink, Swifty, and Crutchy a long time. They’re all lodging house veterans, basically, and even though Skittery doesn’t always find them all that exciting, in his mind those are the key faces that are going to stick around. He’s seen a lot of newsies come and go, and can’t be bothered to go out of his way to befriend all the new ones. Racetrack is also his friend, but he’s that friend that Skittery periodically decides he hates.

Crutchy likes everybody. Whoever is standing closest to him at any given moment is his best friend.


	49. Modern high school cliques

– Jack actually *wouldn’t* be one of the popular kids. I could imagine him being in some kind of special alternative program at the school, for kids who couldn’t really do the whole traditional classroom thing. He’d mostly do that, and be outside of mainstream student society. If you mentioned him to the average student it would be like, “Jack Kelly? The one in the cowboy hat? Didn’t he climb six floors up the building and burst in through the window of one of the science classrooms the other day?” (Note: he did, and he received the biggest round of applause ever for it, before being dragged off to in school suspension).

– Mush would be a total theatre kid. Actually, I feel like he’d be in a ridiculous amount of after school clubs, not because he was trying to build himself up for college or anything, but because he tended to just jump into any group that interested him and needed more members. Hence Mush being involved in school musicals, the gay student union, some kind of Christian student committee, and newspaper. He’d have friends from each group. He’d also try team sports for a while, but he’d be that kid who could kick the ball really hard and run really fast, but usually got completely distracted goofing off with a friend somewhere at the back of the field. Mush would be sort of low-key popular.

\- Specs and Dutchy as science dorks who don’t wash their hair very often, play pranks together, and alternately saved the entire school computer system from some kind of crash or virus, but have also hacked into it and changed Racetrack’s grades more times than he can count.

\- Spot Conlon is too cool for the rest of the student body, pass it on.

\- Blink does sports, but will also follow Mush around to clubs and committees. He’s the jock who accidentally tried out for the school’s production of Into the Woods, and ended up playing Cinderella’s prince.

\- Sarah was the only person to join the school “library club”. She uses her powers to delete Jack’s overdue fines, because good lord does Jack ever check out a lot of books, and wow is he awful at returning them. (He also overestimates what he can read, and occasionally grabs something because it has a pretty cover.). Anyway, that’s how she and Jack met. She is also the queen of the school yearbook committee. Sarah is that nice, pretty, quiet girl who knows everything about everybody.

\- David is new, and tries to be the clean cut straight A student type, but gets really critical of his teachers. He sits alone at lunch. Jack has a history class that he mainstreams, and he jumps in on David’s rants a lot. David doesn’t understand what his motivation might be.

\- At some point they all end up in journalism club and that’s why they are friends.


End file.
